The words of the trade
Glossary
Sixteen terms you will come across in a storage or fast-charging quote, defined without jargon and without shortcuts.
- BESS
- Battery Energy Storage System. The term is used as is in professional English.
- C&I
- Commercial and Industrial. The segment between residential and grid-scale plants. In plain terms: storage for commercial and industrial sites.
- That is exactly the segment of the Mercury range.
- Peak shaving
- Limiting the power peak drawn from the grid by using the battery as a buffer. When consumption exceeds a threshold, the battery discharges to cover the excess.
- Industrial sites are billed on the highest peak measured over a short interval. Billing rules vary by country and by supplier.
- Self-consumption
- Consuming on site the electricity you generate, instead of exporting it to the grid. The battery shifts midday generation to evening consumption.
- LFP
- Lithium iron phosphate, the cell chemistry used by the Mercury range. It is preferred for stationary installations for its thermal stability.
- PCS
- Power Conversion System, the converter that turns the battery's direct current into alternating current, and the other way round. On an all-in-one system it sits inside the cabinet.
- EMS
- Energy Management System, the control system that decides when to charge and when to discharge, based on prices, on the site's load curve and on the setpoints it receives.
- All in one
- Said of a system that brings together in a single cabinet the cells, the conversion, the cooling, the fire safety and the control system. As opposed to an installation assembled on site from separate components.
- IRVE
- EV charging infrastructure. The term covers the complete installation: the charger, but also the dedicated cabling, the protection devices, the metering and the supervision.
- Stellabox supplies the charger. The rest is the responsibility of the site's installer.
- DC charging
- Direct current charging, known as fast charging. The converter sits in the charger and not in the vehicle, which allows high power levels.
- CCS2
- Combined Charging System 2, the dominant fast-charging connector in Europe. Type 2 is the standard for alternating current charging.
- OCPP
- Open Charge Point Protocol, the open protocol that lets a charger talk to supervision software, whatever the manufacturer.
- Microgrid
- A combination of generation, storage and consumption able to run grid-connected or independently.
- Aggregation
- The grouping of several installations by a third party, the aggregator, in order to dispatch them together and monetise their flexibility on the electricity markets.
- Access depends on the country, the supplier and the aggregator.
- Class 9
- The class of dangerous goods that lithium batteries fall under in transport. It imposes marking, documents and carriage rules.
- UN 38.3
- The mandatory series of tests for transporting a lithium battery: temperature, mechanical shock, short circuit and four others. The test report accompanies the goods throughout the logistics chain.
These words are there to help you read a quote. To receive one, two screens is enough.
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