In the circular economy, the lithium-ion battery supply chain focuses on maximizing resource efficiency and minimizing waste. It involves sourcing raw materials responsibly, extending battery life through reuse and refurbishment, and recycling old batteries to recover valuable materials and give them a second life. This approach reduces reliance on new raw materials, lowers environmental impact, and promotes sustainability.
UEI gained prestigious awards from the Department of Energy and CTSI. Daniel sold the company in 2012.
Daniel Wells is the Co-Founder and COO of Texas Energy Storage TES, Inc. (TES) that offers a patented Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) solution to meet the growing demand for reliable and efficient energy storage. Our BESS, featuring a patented Integral Tubular Battery (ITB速) design, addresses key challenges in battery performance and safety. TES aims to provide a cost-effective, scalable solution that supports various applications while enhancing grid stability and balancing energy consumption. With a rapidly expanding BESS market, TES plans to generate revenue through sales, leasing, power arbitrage, and licensing its technology. The company's competitive advantages, combined with its targeted marketing strategy, position it well for success.
1) Energy consumers need BESS to cut costs and provide continuity of service - power company customers benefit from avoiding peak pricing (peak shaving), ensuring consistent service, and from potentially profitable power arbitrage
2) Energy producers need BESS to store unused energy at times of low demand for use during periods of high demand - power companies benefit by being better able to manage volatile demand patterns and resource availability
3) The grid needs BESS to maintain balance and enable the inevitable transition to renewables - the grid benefits from increased resilience and reliability
4) TES BESS units are the best, the safest, the longest lasting and the most configurable systems with propriety, patented technology that mitigates thermal runaway and thus prevents fires
The narrative: To understand why BESS are so important to successfully navigating the challenges of efficient energy usage in a volatile environment, it is important to step back and take a brief dive into the status quo, because it is chaotic and straining from change at the moment. That’s an important problem our BESS units address, but not the only one.
The current environment: Right now, energy usage is going up, the price of energy is fluctuating wildly; and the grid itself is making its most important and consequential transition in generations: the transition to renewables and away from fossil fuels. There is no reason to believe this transition will slow down - rather, the opposite is true.
How important is the energy market? Just how big is it? What is the environmental impact involved? The Center for Sustainable Systems, University of Michigan. 2023. "U.S. Energy System Factsheet." Pub. No. CSS03-11 provides some insight:
Energy plays a vital role in modern society, enabling systems that meet human needs such as sustenance, shelter, employment, and transportation. In 2021, the U.S. spent $1.3 trillion on energy, or 5.7% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). On a per capita basis, annual energy costs were $3,967 per person. Environmental impacts associated with the production and consumption of energy include global climate change, acid rain, hazardous air pollution, smog, radioactive waste, and habitat destruction.
Demand is increasing, that’s obvious, driven by an increasing population; and the advent of new, energy-intensive technologies like AI, Crypto and the data centers than comprise the cloud. Energy usage historically used to grow at one-to-two percent per year. in the last few years, the rate has been between five-and-seven percent. But that’s not all.
The challenge for power companies, energy consumers and the grid itself is the amount of concurrent change and disruption we are currently witnessing. Demand patterns and resource availability are also changing, in some cases dramatically.
Further, climate change is adding pressure and urgency to the equation. increasing temperatures coupled with more frequent and intense natural disasters are straining the grid and the risk management costs involved for power companies and their insurers are skyrocketing. Huge payouts have forced rate increases which customers have to bear. It’s just untenable.
Our solution: Battery Energy Storage Systems are a vital, some would say critical, component of a comprehensive, workable and safe solution to many of these problems. And, importantly, TES BESS units are better than the rest.
The thing about renewables is that they produce energy on an intermittent basis. That is: solar when the sun is out; and wind, well…when the wind is blowing at a rate that turns the turbines. This produces a pattern of energy production and usage called the “Duck Curve”.
As Wikipedia points out: “Without any form of energy storage, after times of high solar generation, power companies must rapidly increase other forms of power generation around the time of sunset to compensate for the loss of solar generation, a major concern for grid operators where there is rapid growth of photovoltaics.[9] Short term use batteries, at a large enough scale of use, can help to flatten the duck curve and prevent generator use fluctuation and can help to maintain voltage profile.”
For the grid to work efficiently and power transmission to be optimal, there must be a balance struck between producers and users of energy. The way to achieve balance in the volatile environment described is to deploy BESS units to store energy until it is needed. That works for everybody involved, the utility, the customer and the grid.
BESS's primary role is to store energy, it sounds simple… right? But these devices do so much more in reality. They benefit energy producers, energy consumers, and balance the grid itself - thus shoring up our aging infrastructure and paving the way to the renewable energy transition.
Here’s how industry and government agencies will benefit: As utility rates for energy vary, according to time-of-day and demand loads, large users like business and government can experience dramatic rate fluctuations, with peak rates sometimes reaching ten times normal. Deploying BESS systems enables businesses, agencies and large non-profits like some hospitals to avoid these exorbitant charges through “peak shaving” - using stored battery power instead of higher priced energy from the grid. In many cases, the savings can be substantial. The best way for an organization to manage its energy consumption, cut costs and improve efficiency is to deploy a TES BESS. ROI is significant for all the players in the energy space; providers, consumers and service managers (the grid).
And of course there is the added benefit of continuity of service. Problems that arise at the point of origin, the transmission and distribution network, and end points of our energy/power grid are random, and therefore unpredictable. That’s a big and growing problem, for energy producers, service managers and end users. Battery energy storage systems move resources closer to the load, which reduces pressure on transmission lines during problem scenarios. This is a valuable risk management function.
With our BESS units deployed, businesses, institutions and agencies can maintain critical functions during power outages and planned blackouts (as in wildfire prevention shutdowns). Businesses, like the military, like to be in control of their environments as well as their machines. Reliability requires redundancy. So deploying BESS for backup energy just makes sense. When something goes wrong, operators and consumers need the flexibility offered by BESS installations. When one adds the cost-savings associated with peak shaving and power arbitrage, the value proposition becomes irresistible.
Why TES BESS units are the best choice: Texas Energy Storage, Inc. was founded by an engineer with decades of experience making complex, large refineries safer places through hardware innovation employing the latest design technology. Dr. Ahmed Tarfaoui brought his considerable background and talents to the task of designing the safest battery enclosures available today - and he succeeded and was awarded two patents by the USPTO. He has extended his patent protection to international markets.
Dr. Tarfaoui’s patented, breakthrough ‘shell-and-tube’ design, based on gold standards established by the “Tubular Exchanger Manufacturers Association”, cools the batteries as well as the enclosure and thus mitigates to a great extent the dangers associated with thermal runaway. This helps prevent the catastrophic fires that have to date been something of an obstacle to wider adoption. With TES BESS, problem solved.
Because of their efficient “Integrated Tubular Battery®️” design and construction, TES enclosures will be longer lived and much safer than competing units. Available at competitive prices for enclosures with new batteries, TES BESS units will also offer a significant, disruptive low-cost alternative configuration featuring used, repurposed EV batteries.
TES BESS’s also feature field replacement of individual battery packs - making continuous operation a reality. TES BESS enclosures are battery-agnostic, and can accommodate new or reconditioned EV batteries to give users more flexible options while supporting recycling and reuse. Ultimately we hope to have a positive impact by reducing the impact of rare earth mining, for materials like Lithium and Cobalt, through our recycle and reuse focus. This also squares with the ESG goals of many corporations and agencies.