Testing business and lab facilities development
Growing test and lab business
Power Projects Leufkens has experience with and offers technical and business services around electrical testing and its test facilities. They include
- for Testing, Inspection and Certification (TIC)
organizations
o market studies,
o market campaigns
o business development;
- for Energy Storage, high-voltage and high-power
laboratory facilities
o technical studies
o feasibility studies;
o liaison between manufacturers and testing facilities;
o design;
o engineering;
o building
- Mergers & Acquisitions of labs and TIC organizations
o including business cases and due diligence
Finding, engineering and founding of High Voltage and High Power Labs
Power Projects Leufkens consults on the founding and construction and development of high voltage/high power testing laboratories.
This is truly global work—it involves partners on six continents!
One experience was finding of a high-power lab when Paul Leufkens for KEMA in 2009 learnt that Zkušebnictví in Prague was for sale which was the beginning of a merger and successful cooperation.
Southern Research, NICE partner in battery project
Paul Leufkens is part of a team that created both a DC and a 72 kVA AC test bed for testing of a Battery Energy Storage System:
press release per August 29, 2018:
"SOUTHERN RESEARCH, NICE TEAM TO REPURPOSE USED EV BATTERIES AS ENERGY STORAGE SYSTEMS
Southern Research and the National Institute of Clean and Low-Carbon Energy (NICE) are collaborating on a project to transform retired electric vehicle batteries into energy storage systems for offices and factories. Under the partnership, Southern Research will provide critical testing services to assist NICE to develop stationary power systems using very low cost, retired EV battery packs for the U.S. market.
'NICE’s technology solves the problems associated with using old EV batteries; it is a breakthrough,' said John Lemmon, Ph.D., director of Distributed Energy at NICE Beijing. 'Southern Research and their partners will play a crucial role to provide third party validation for performance and economic analysis for our energy storage system.'
To facilitate the project SR will make a significant investment to establish a multi-purpose test bed (...). Its sophisticated equipment will be used to assess the performance of individual battery packs and systems linking multiple batteries.
'Collaborating with a world-class research organization like NICE will expand our capabilities in an area experiencing rapid growth,' said Corey Tyree, Ph.D., senior director of Southern Research’s Energy & Environment division."
Energy Storage testing and lab building
Power Projects Leufkens supports the team of Southern Research, that in collaboration with Southern Company, EPRI, DOE, ORNL and the State of Alabama, is developing a new Energy Storage Research Center (ESRC) in the Southeastern United States, focused on grid-scale energy storage (ES) applications in combination with renewables.
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Market study and stakeholder survey, summary available on request
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The ES Symposium for the Southeast in September 2017 with animated discussion and interesting showcases from EOS, UET, and Zero RPM, and many featured panelists, including Imre Gyuk (DOE), Haresh Kameth (EPRI), Vince Sprenkle (PPNL), Karsten Pinkwart (Fraunhofer Institute, Germany) and Mike Bush (Southern Company)
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Development of the ES Test Manual, adopted by the ESIC, which offers a staged approach to system evaluation
Assistance to build a Smart Grid test bed for CPRI in India
ESTA International won in 2016 a grant from the US Trade and Development Agency for providing technical assistance to the Central Power Research Institute (CPRI), India.
CPRI worked to implement the first Smart Grid test bed project in India, located in Bangalore. Paul Leufkens was an Associate on the ESTA Team that engineered the test bed, based on practical use cases. This consisted of building an integrated interoperability laboratory and a Smart Grid technology demonstration center to facilitate CPRI research and perform controlled evaluations of integrated Smart Grid technologies.
These technologies include substation automation, load management, smart meters, cyber security network sensing, energy management, renewables integration, and applications for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV).
Development Advanced Power-Testing Laboratories in Brazil
DNV KEMA distributed a press release per August 14th 2012:
“RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL and ARNHEM, THE NETHERLANDS--DNV KEMA Energy & Sustainability will assist SINAEES/SENAI, the Brazilian association of electrical and electronic industry and the national service for industry, with the design and development of a new high-voltage and high-power laboratory complex. The project was launched on August 13 at a ceremony in Belo Horizonte, the capital of the Minas Gerais province, where SENAI and provincial government officials signed an agreement to support the laboratory project. The laboratories (…) will be located in the city of Itajubá, Minas Gerais.
(…)
'We are very pleased to support SINAEES/SENAI with the development of these laboratories in one of the world's most dynamic markets,' said Paul Leufkens, president of KEMA-Powertest,
LLC in the United States. "Our independent High-Power and High-Voltage Laboratories in the Netherlands and United States are recognized as world-leading testing facilities. Our experience in
T&D testing and consulting services and our commitment to investments in state-of-the art laboratories will help SINAEES/SENAI to realize dedicated testing facilities for the industry."
In the meantime, the design of the lab is finalized and a beginning has been made with tendering of the large equipment as short-circuit generator and transformers.
