Axion Power International, Inc. announced that well known industry innovator, Robert F. Nelson, PhD, has joined the company, as Vice President of Manufacturing Engineering. Thomas Granville, Axion CEO, said that the expansion of the manufacturing development team is in response to rapidly evolving business conditions both in the company and in the energy storage industry as a whole.
Nelson is a specialized manufacturing design and development professional with over 40 years of experience in academia and industry. From 1967 through 1977, he worked as an assistant professor of chemistry at California State University, Sacramento; the University of Idaho and the University of Georgia. Since 1977, he has held a variety of increasingly responsible technical management positions at leading firms in the lead-acid battery industry including Gates Corp.; Portable Energy Products; the Advanced Lead Acid Battery Consortium; Bolder Technologies Corp.; and most recently Firefly Energy Inc., where he served as Senior Vice President of Engineering.
Tom Granville, CEO said, "Bob has been a respected expert in the battery industry for over 30 years and was a driving force for the development and commercialization of the valve regulated lead acid battery technology used in every modern sealed lead-acid battery. He was also responsible for originating the Advanced Lead Acid Battery Consortium, an industry consortium that he subsequently managed for several years. For the last 11 years, Bob has focused on developing advanced lead acid battery technology for hybrid vehicles and other heavy demand applications. We believe his expertise will be invaluable as we complete the development and begin the commercialization of our award winning PbC battery technology, which promises a 300% to 400% improvement in battery cycle life."
Granville continued, "Utilities, faced with the need to build generation and distribution facilities to meet peak customer demand, have long believed that cost-effective short-term energy storage systems would be an ideal solution. To date, the bulk of the efforts have been unsatisfactory due to the high cost and limited lives of most battery-based systems. We believe our low-cost PbC™ battery has the potential to provide the cost-effective short-term energy solution the utility industry has sought for decades. Our NYSERDA-DCEC installation will cost significantly less than other recently announced battery projects, and will give us an excellent opportunity to test our batteries and management system under extreme utility operating conditions."
Dr. Nelson commented, "Emerging battery applications in wind and solar power, utility applications and hybrid electric vehicles, all have unique performance demands that current lead-acid technology cannot satisfy. Axion’s work on the PbC battery has overcome many of the technical performance limitations of lead-acid technology and created a product with the capability of satisfying the extraordinary demands of these new applications. I am looking forward to helping Axion introduce a truly unique product to the market."
