The battery industry is going through massive growth at the moment, buoyed by a mounting demand for transport electrification, grid energy storage, and large investment programs across the globe such as the Inflation Reduction Act here in the United States. However, meeting this burgeoning demand and best using the investment for a sustainable battery ecosystem requires a paradigm shift – digital transformation. Battery development is fundamentally different due to very strong interaction across chemical, electrical, electronics, mechanical and software domains. Traditional engineering and manufacturing processes, developed and perfected for internal combustion engines and other technologies, are insufficient to accelerate the pace of innovation, and scaling up production to giga scale for battery. Digital transformation, through a combination of digital twin framework, automation technologies, data intelligence leveraging generative AI, unleashes rapid innovation, allows seamless manifestation on these innovations on factory floor and brings close loop optimization for battery development, manufacturing and deployment. That way manufacturers can deliver on their ambition to increase energy density, fast charging capability, lower scrap rates, rapid scale up of production, and effective recycling for sustainable ecosystem.
A question of scale
Scale is one of the largest hurdles in battery manufacturing, cropping up in a number of different ways. The batteries themselves are more in-demand. The expected market for batteries is set to reach 14 times growth from 2018 by 2030. That means making more batteries than ever before. The battery sales are not the only thing growing, however. To match the demand, manufacturers are building larger and larger factories for production, incurring the moniker “gigafactories.” But the name also refers to the capacity, as they are producing battery storage on the order of gigawatt-hours.
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