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Zinc8 Energy Solutions CSE:ZAIR


Zinc8 Energy Solutions has developed an innovative battery technology that uses zinc and air as the storage fuel. Their technology is here to solve the intermittent and unpredictable nature of renewable energy sources such as wind and solar as much as 60-70% of the energy produced in this manner is lost. With both environmental and efficiency factors in mind, Zinc8 is striving to meet the growing need for secure and reliable power.

Significant validation was awarded for this technology when the New York Power Authority selected the zinc-air energy storage system which saw  the utility call for partnerships with early-stage clean tech startups to help modernize the power system with more distributed energy resources and grid edge solutions. As a winning project, NYPA will contribute US$2.55 million to the project over a three-year period, Zinc8 said in a statement.

Zinc8’s patented zinc-air energy storage system efficiently stores energy in the form of zinc particles and contains none of the traditional high cost battery commodities such as lithium, vanadium or cobalt. The technology allows for low-cost mass storage of energy and can be deployed into a wide range of scalable energy storage applications.

This award comes as New York State governor Andrew Cuomo’s Green New Deal targets an energy storage goal of three gigawatts by 2030 and a commitment to 100% electricity from emission-free sources throughout the state by 2040.

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Zinc8 is currently putting together the first batteries for demonstration with the support of funding and co-development partners in British Columbia and New York State. They expect to fully commission three demonstration projects by 2022-2023. Deploying these initial zinc-air energy storage systems will accelerate the alignment of the required resources and supply chains to start operations of the first production line in 2023.

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Technology Explained

The technology works with the reaction of zinc and oxygen in a reversible process: Power from the grid or renewable source is used to generate zinc particles in the zinc regenerator. Oxygen is released to the atmosphere as a by-product in this process. The zinc particles are flowed to the storage tank and maintained in a potassium hydroxide (KOH) electrolyte until required. Whenever power is needed, the stored zinc particles are delivered to the power stack, where they are recombined with oxygen to generate electricity. The dissolved zinc oxide (ZnO) by-product is returned to the storage tank in the form of potassium zincate for later regeneration.

The battery is a multi-megawatt eight-plus hours capacity targeted to utility-scale, behind-the-meter, and larger microgrid applications. It is a stackable containerized system, so an adequate footprint needs to be available for its installation. This is not a solution for electric vehicles or for under the 4-hour duration batteries market.

With the right operation, maintenance, and component replacement procedures in place, the battery has a lifetime of 20 years.

Other rival battery technologies 

Zinc8 is combining the best of two worlds: low-cost zinc-air chemistry and flow-battery technology, which gives you the capability of delivering the lowest-cost for long-duration storage.

To date, lithium-ion has been the dominant technology for energy storage, but it has strictly been used for dispatch applications no longer than four hours in duration. The modular cost structure of lithium-ion technology makes longer duration projects (>4hrs) not economically viable. Flow batteries with varied chemistries have tried to fill this market gap with limited success. Flow-battery chemistries like Vanadium Redox and Zinc-Bromide have the inherent limitation of high material costs, and like Lithium-ion, also have intrinsic safety issues. The Zinc8 Energy Storage System will truly disrupt the long-duration energy storage space by providing a battery that is safe, low-cost, scalable, and reliable.

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Where this technology makes sense

There will be a tremendous growth of renewable energy (mainly solar and wind) penetration in the grid due to population growth and electrification in the next 30 years. This will cause a dramatic shift in how prices of the wholesale electricity market behave: highly volatile and unpredictable prices will drive the need for long-duration energy storage at different points of the electricity grid. The markets where the need will be more tangible are within behind-the-meter commercial and industrial customers, utilities, and utility-scale renewable energy developers.   

There are entire remote communities and mining sites disconnected from the main electric grids that rely mainly on diesel generators to power their communities and businesses. Long-duration energy storage can play a key role in fully offsetting diesel gensets and completely decarbonizing remote microgrids, by providing renewable energy baseload through the night and even for full days or weeks.

As part of our go-to-market strategy, we are following a top-down market approach by pursuing partnerships with large utilities to validate the value of our technology by providing services like congestion relief, transmission, and distribution upgrades deferral, and increase renewable energy penetration. As mentioned earlier, we are not in the electric vehicle market, but our long-duration low-cost system can provide stability and certainty to remote electric vehicle charging stations fueled by renewable energy such as wind and solar.

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