Thailand’s first project to use the lead/supercapacitor technology of the UltraBattery from Furukawa Battery will begin operating in July, the LABAT conference in Bulgaria was told last week.

The brainchild of Australian scientists at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), the UltraBattery is supplied in Japan and Thailand by Japanese firm Furukawa Battery. Elsewhere, Australian firm Ecoult, owned by East Penn, supplies the product.

In February India’s Exide Industries announced a partnership with Ecoult to manufacture UltraBatteries.

This Thai project, which was agreed in January, will be installed at a 10MW wind farm at Lomligor in southern Thailand and will contain 576 UB1000 cells.

Furukawa is working with the Thai wind power generating company Inter Far East Wind International (I-Wind).

“Solar and wind power generation continues to expand rapidly as the renewable energy sector develops in Thailand and throughout Asia, and the use of energy storage systems together with such technologies in order to reach a balance between power demand and supply has recently been drawing much attention,” said a Furukawa official.