The electrification of the economy is advancing steadily. This in turn leads to an acceleration in the launch onto the market of new products and applications, including electrical energy storage systems. As a direct result, there is a growing demand from equipment manufacturers for battery certification and approval, both for electric vehicles and for their compliance with the transport requirements given by UN 38.1. This demand arises from a legal requirement prior to the introduction of new products on the market, but also as a way of ensuring the suitability, quality and safety of the batteries that power them.

Until now, the possibilities for battery certification in Spain have been limited, both due to the limited number of laboratories capable of carrying out this task, and to the growing saturation of these laboratories, especially in terms of specialised electrical testing.

Aware of the growing demand, in February 2021, CIDETEC Energy Storage, launched a new Battery Testing Laboratory located in the MUBIL Centre for Electromobility and Energy Storage, with an investment of more than €6M in equipment, to meet the testing needs of both its own research and development projects, as well as direct requests from other companies.

In order to offer a comprehensive testing service for battery certification, conformity assessment and approval, CIDETEC and LCOE as testing laboratory and approval technical service of the Foundation for the Promotion of Industrial Innovation (FFII), with extensive experience and leader at national level, decided to sign a collaboration agreement for the provision of these advanced services, taking advantage of the already successful collaborations and synergies between the two organisations.

Under this agreement, certification and approval tests for electric traction batteries and other uses can be carried out at CIDETEC Energy Storage's facilities with technicians from LCOE, which, as an accredited approval technical service, will issue the corresponding conformity certificates or the test report for approval as a rechargeable electrical energy storage system (REESS), in accordance with UN-ECE Regulation 100.03. This activity is complemented by the additional capacities in place at LCOE's own facilities, making up a comprehensive offer available to both national and international industry.