With a passion for Australian-made, battery manufacturer Energy Renaissance, in partnership with Australia’s national science agency CSIRO, set out to develop a defence-grade Battery Management System (BMS) for its family of batteries. One that could be developed and manufactured locally.

The BMS acts as the “nerve centre” of the battery and is critical to its operating efficiency, monitoring and reporting on its usage, lifespan, and faults through a mobile network. And this addition to its suite of offerings enables Energy Renaissance to provide its customers with a complete battery energy storage solution.

Howard Lovatt, Chief Technology Officer at Energy Renaissance, said they wanted to work with CSIRO due to its battery development experience and its understanding of the unique requirements of the Australian customer.

“Unlike internationally manufactured products, our systems need to withstand temperatures between 10 and 40 degrees Celsius,” he said. “Working with partners that understood the technical requirements and shared the same vision as us – building a clean energy supply chain for Australians – was of paramount importance.

“The collaboration with CSIRO and IMCRC was a huge success. With IMCRC’s guidance keeping us focused and on track, we worked collectively toward our goal, and we officially launched our BMS in 2022.”

The project wasn’t without its challenges. In fact, COVID-19 and downstream supply chain issues resulted in considerable obstacles that had to be collaboratively overcome.

The original microprocessor destined for use in this project was no longer available, and a smaller microprocessor had to be sourced. And to make that work, new code was required, which added time and effort to the project.

Commenting on the journey, Dr Adam Best, Principal Research Scientist at CSIRO, said, “IMCRC shouldn’t underestimate just how much we appreciate the investment it made in this project. Without its support, we wouldn’t have been able to achieve what we have.

In addition to the delivery of the BMS, the project also created opportunities for research internships, one of which resulted in employment at CSIRO.

“We had six interns supporting various aspects of the project. Two of them designed the switch gear for the BMS, which vastly reduced its size and utilisation of space. I’m proud that we were able to provide these students with practical, real-life opportunities and were eventually be able to hire one of them,” said Adam.

IMCRC’s strategic approach throughout this project helped us identify our priorities and brought us closer to our vision of developing an Australian-designed and made clean energy storage ecosystem.

Howard Lovatt
Chief Executive Officer, Energy Renaissance