Zēlos: Zinc Batteries for California Electrical Customer Power Backup

Backup energy storage, with market growth of 500% per year, is an increasing necessity for the 2.7 million Californians in fire safety power shutoff risk areas. The sector is now dominated by lithium-ion batteries and fossil-fuel-based (diesel or gasoline) generators. Lithium-ion batteries have safety issues, resulting in about 600 overheating and fire incidents each year in California. Consumer gasoline generators emit carbon dioxide and pose risks of carbon monoxide poisoning. There is a need for cost-effective, reliable, safe, and environmentally-sound energy storage.

Through this project, Zēlos successfully developed proof-of-concept for a novel zinc-manganese battery technology system that can lower costs, improve reliability, and increase safety for California ratepayers. Zēlos also aimed to reduce environmental impacts of battery production and improve recyclability. Zēlos Energy’s (Zēlos) battery technology enables alkaline batteries with both a water-based, nonflammable electrolyte and nontoxic and inexpensive electrode materials to be recharged hundreds of times. Zēlos’ zinc-manganese battery runs for hundreds of cycles, overcoming the typical service lifetime constraints for zinc-manganese batteries.

Zēlos’ project objectives included demonstrating a functional, low-cost, safe battery prototype and defining specifications for a residential energy storage product prototype. Over the course of this project, Zēlos advanced its battery storage technology from technology readiness level 4 to 6, and successfully developed and demonstrated lab-scale batteries, including cells up to 120 amp-hour and 12 Volt battery packs with a nameplate energy density of greater than 70 Watt hours per kilogram. These batteries also performed more than 500 cycles under demanding cycling conditions.