Long-duration zinc air battery technology is advancing. Metal batteries using zinc are more advantageous than ones using lithium as a result of its accessibility, cost effectiveness, and longer life span. The lithium used in lithium-ion batteries, which provide nearly all today’s storage, is imported, has soared in cost and is environmentally problematic.
Two key zinc air battery pilots, headed by Toronto-based e-Zinc, are in the works in California and Texas. These pilots are being tested to provide 20 hours or more of continuous output in order to help the burgeoning technology achieve commercialization to keep electricity supplies flowing and decarbonize the grid.
The California Energy Commission awarded e-Zinc a $1.3 million grant in September 2020 for their prototype technology demonstration that aims to provide commercial and industrial backup power during outages. The project is about 10 kilowatts and will be charged by a solar photovoltaic system.
CEC staff said they expect e-Zinc to finish deploying the second half of its system this summer. It will be tested in the field by December 2023 and undergo a year of testing. It was originally going to be sited at a 125-acre site owned by a greenhouse grower in Camarillo, near Los Angeles, with a 1 MW solar plant but the site was sold. A new demonstration site is being located and the location will not be known “for a while,” the CEC told Current June 7.
Also under development are grant-funded zinc air batteries with 100 hours of output, said Mike Gravely, CEC Research & Development supervisor. The technology has been lab tested and “appears to be very promising,” he said.
Alternatives to dominant lithium-ion battery storage are needed as a means to address ongoing geopolitical supply constraints, as well as lithium’s current battery output limitation of two to four hours. The price of lithium has soared since the start of the war in Ukraine. On June 7, it was priced a $70.8/lb while the price of zinc was $1.72/lb. Additionally, zinc batteries have double the output of current lithium batteries, can operate in very cold or very hot temperatures, and are fire resistant.
Energy storage batteries that can supply several hours of power are critical to greening California’s grid. The key need is the ability to store intermittently excess solar and wind resources in order to provide electricity to facilities during outages, as well as lower stress on the grid during times of high demand as solar production falls off with the sun setting. Another advantage of zinc is that the battery cells don’t lose their charge like lithium-ion ones, according to e-Zinc.
Zinc battery headed for Texas wind farm
At the end of last week, e-Zinc reached a deal with Toyota Tsusho Canada to use the battery developer’s technology at a wind farm in Borden, Texas. It aims to store the excess renewable energy and supply the grid for 24 hours starting next spring. The battery will be constructed at a site owned by Eurus Energy Holdings, a corporation owned by Toyota Tsusho and Tokyo Electric Power Company Holding.
This demonstration “is a key step in validating e-Zinc’s value proposition for integration and firming of renewable power,” said Sara Chamberlain, Managing Director of Energy Foundry, an early investor in e-Zinc. “The combination of e-Zinc’s innovation and [Toyota’s] project implementation expertise will propel the company forward into commercialized success.”
E-Zinc technology entails detaching the zinc from electrodes to allow “the metal to be stored independently at a low cost, unlike rechargeable batteries in which the energy-bearing metal is fixed on the electrodes.” The energy storage is “within the same electrochemical cell as the charging and discharging electrodes, enabling a simple operation,” the company stated.