Kawasaki Heavy Orders Corvus' Blue Marlin Energy Storage System

Japan's Kawasaki Heavy Industries (KHI) has ordered the first commercial unit of a new Corvus Energy high-density lithium-ion capacitor energy storage system (ESS) Blue Marlin.

According to Corvus, which plans to market the system to the offshore energy market, the Blue Marlin uses lithium-ion capacitor (LiC) cells that sustain very high charge/discharge rates of 550 C peak and 200 C continuous, enabling both energy recapture and fast discharge for high-power load handling. It can deliver beyond a million cycles with minimal capacity loss, Corvus said.

Corvus Energy incorporated the LiC technology into the maritime-specific Blue Marlin product under a product development agreement with KHI, first announced in September 2019.

“Corvus Energy has been an outstanding development partner. They have demonstrated high standards in energy storage engineering and marine market expertise throughout this project. Their know-how around thermal management inside battery modules is unmatched and critical to ensuring safe and reliable operation,” says Takeshi Ohata, Managing Executive Officer of Kawasaki Heavy Industries.

“This project demonstrates that LiC technology is well-suited to maritime and offshore energy recapture applications,” says Sean Puchalski, EVP Strategy & Business Planning at Corvus Energy. “It provides the best of both worlds—current-handling performance nearing a supercapacitor with improved energy density. When space is at a premium and high power is required for short amounts of time, the Corvus Energy Blue Marlin product is a fantastic solution.”

Offshore energy market

Corvus Energy said it would market the Blue Marlin ESS mainly in the Offshore segment for applications with short power fluctuations at very high power. 

"With its lightweight, ruggedized and high power-density design, Blue Marlin provides significant benefits in such applications. For example, the potential for efficiency improvement through energy recapture is substantial for many of these operations, including heave compensation, drilling draw works, payload lowering, and similar high-power applications. Further, it can handle peaks in the power demand profile. For drilling rigs and vessels with heave compensation systems, this could mean that one or more diesel generators previously used to handle sudden variations in power can be turned off," Corvus said.

“The entire oil and gas industry increasingly commit to invest in green technology to reduce the carbon footprint of their operations,” says Geir Bjørkeli, CEO of Corvus Energy. “We are pleased that by adding the Blue Marlin, we now offer a complete portfolio to improve energy efficiency in offshore vessel operations as well as rig topside applications.”