Philippe Alleil is the industrial director of Forsee
Power Solution, a France-based international battery integrator. He explains
why some of the most innovative technology today depends on energy storage
capacity. From his engineer perspective, batteries appear to be far more
complex than they seem.
The battery is a two-century-old technology.
What are its innovation perspectives today?
Philippe Alleil: Two hundred centuries ago batteries were heavy, bulky
and quite simple technology-wise. They were not powering many devices. Today’s
battery are high tech items. They are a combination of electrochemistry and
electronics. They are small, light, and powerful. They are embedded in any type
of devices, from the smallest, like mobile phones, to the biggest, like trucks
or buses. The technology has improved for the last two century and its keeps
improving today. In the future, batteries might replace power plants for
instance, by storing huge quantity of energy and work like actual power
providers. The potential for innovation is still huge but it takes a lot of
time to develop.
An efficient technology is usually
standardized. How do professional users manage to benefit an ever-changing piece
of technology like a battery?
Philippe Alleil: As far as we are concerned, the speed of technical
improvement is not a problem for us. Neither for our customers. Forsee Power
Solutions is not a cell manufacturer. We are a system integrator, meaning that we
monitor all the technologies available on the market, we know all the cells’ spec
sheets and take care of selecting the right one for our clients. To put it
simply, they trust us to pick the right electrochemistry for them. Then we use our engineering skills to
fit the cell in their product. We take care of matching and adapting the right technology
with the right customers. Every time someone has a need for a mobile power
supply and does not find the solution on his own, he calls an integrator. And
that’s how the devices we all use every day are usually fitted with the best
cell technology available on the market.
What are the responsibilities of a battery
integrator like Forsee regarding the performance of an energy storage solution?
Philippe Alleil: The integrator’s responsibility is tremendous. His
job is to fit a battery system within a bigger system like a car, a bicycle, or
a wheelchair for instance. Even though the integrator does not produce the cell
he uses, he picks it on the behalf of his customer and plug it into his product.
He can therefore be regarded as an intermediary. But from the customer’s
perspective, the integrators is responsible for the reliability of the whole
battery system. If the power solution ever fails in any way, the customers will
come to the integrator. The job therefore requires a very good knowledge of the
technology along with an excellent quality of service.
Forsee’s customers come from various sectors
like medical equipment, mobility systems, and robotics. How do you manage to meet
their specific requirements equally?
Philippe Alleil: It always starts with a good discussion between our
development teams and our customers. Our first goal is to understand the
environment of our customer’s product, and write down an index comprising all
the product specifications. All the companies we know serve share a need for
complex power solutions and want the technical part to be taken care of for
them by a specialist. These companies look for advice as much as for the right
battery system. We offer both and make sure they are 100 percent satisfied. It
is very demanding, but very rewarding too. We no longer sell standard,
mass-produced battery systems for instance. But people now come at us because
they know our expertise in the field of high performance, high duration and
safety battery systems.
Why is the medical industry such a big
consumer for battery integration solutions?
Philippe Alleil: Actually, the medical industry does not consume more
batteries than other sectors. However, it does have a need for very reliable,
high quality batteries and power solutions. Medical devices manufacturers want
guarantees regarding embedded battery systems. Integrators bring such
guarantees. Hence, of course, Forsee Power Solutions frequently works with the
medical equipment industry, and makes its expertise available for it.
Electric cars and mobility in general are
still small however. Is mobility an important market for Forsee yet?
Philippe Alleil: Mobility is a key market for the future. We regard it
as a development perspective since it is a technically challenging market. But
it also carries a little bit of disappointment since it was expected to take
off very quickly and to stand for up to 20 percent of the world automotive
market. It is not yet the case. A couple a niche markets are taking off though.
Electric trucks, electric buses, light wheels vehicles for instance are slowly
becoming common in urban areas. They are used for delivery in city centers, for
public transportation. They make life in cities more sustainable. Forsee works
a lot with mid-sized companies which do not have their own development team for
battery solutions. We can see that such companies grow in number and that they will
keep doing so.
Philippe Alleil: Robotic industry today has not entered the
mass-production stage. It is a niche market as well, producing prototypes and
very innovative products. It is a technological showcase for many companies,
including battery integrators like Forsee Power Solutions. When we work on this
market, we select the most advanced cell technology, the most complex battery
management systems in order to come up with the best of engineering. Everybody
learns a lot from such projects. Robotics engineers learn, and we learn with
them too since we have to figure out new solutions to solve problems that never
occurred before. We have to be innovative to come around the limits of existing
technology.
Maintaining reliability at the highest level
as possible must require important R&D expense. What is Forsee’s policy
regarding this matter?
Philippe Alleil: Of course R&D is important in order to ensure the
high level of satisfaction reliability-wise. Besides we rely a lot on our
engineers who take special care of reliability requirements. But reliability is
a concern at every stage of the production no matter the client. We need to pay
attention to it during the early stages of conception, during the manufacturing
process, and afterwards with quality control process. Our quality policy
applies to the every stages of value chain.
Most of your competitors are bigger than
you. Why do your clients prefer a small service provider like you over larger
ones?
Philippe Alleil: Many actors on the market were born twenty years ago,
sometimes thirty years ago. Back then, producing a battery pack was a different
industry. The job was requiring different skills. It was all about putting
component together and delivering a pack. You hardly needed any top-notch
engineering skill to do that. Nowadays, technology is very diverse, it has become
more technical and intricate. You need those engineering skills to produce some
very specific battery pack for very specific applications.