Safe and sustainable zinc batteries have made major inroads in the energy storage space over the past five years, accumulating $1.3 billion in combined private and public investment and leading to a half-dozen factory builds.
Last month I enjoyed collaborating with U.S. Department of Energy leadership at a Zinc Battery Workshop at West Virginia University, where we built a roadmap to accelerate commercialization and scale manufacturing of zinc batteries. This opportunity helped me see how far our industry has advanced and what challenges we still need to overcome.
Heading into the workshop, I assessed how far our industry has progressed in six short years. Since the International Zinc Association launched the Zinc Battery Initiative in 2020, five battery developers have commercialized while several more are moving from pilot lines into full production. The pathways to achieving scale vary.
For example, zinc-bromine battery maker Eos Energy Enterprises has benefited from private and public investment, leading to two Pennsylvania factories with an anticipated annual output of 8 GW.
In contrast, nickel-zinc battery manufacturer ZincFive has relied entirely on private funds and found its niche in powering data centers, where high performance coupled with safety makes a compelling case for zinc batteries over the flammable lithium-ion alternative.
A third American company, nickel-zinc producer AEsir Technologies, started with private funding but has found its specialty in fulfilling government contracts to supply backup power to defense systems such as fighter jets and submarines. While we represent manufacturers in Asia, Europe, and North America, we have seen the most growth in the United States, where the government has committed to nurturing the energy storage industry and providing financial support – critical to help developing companies make the leap from pilot line to scale.
AEsir Technologies’ zinc batteries in use at a data center
Support for scale
Even in a nurturing environment, our members need support to scale, as we recently discovered while meeting with battery producers, suppliers, and policymakers in West Virginia. Key takeaways include developing battery material standards, adopting battery performance protocols, creating safety standards specific to zinc batteries, providing affordable access to pilot testing, and guaranteeing production orders to reach scale.
One area the four national lab workshop participants were eager to delve into is improving the efficacy of the zinc anode; a private-public collaboration to develop standardized performance testing protocols will enhance zinc battery performance and achieve maximum energy density.
Just as important as material performance standards are safety standards, currently designed to address the limitations of lithium-ion batteries. As discussed in our workshop, these regulations were written for flammable lithium-ion batteries, which require expensive monitoring system due to their propensity for thermal runaway.
In contrast, we see that zinc batteries are nonflammable and excel in long‑duration and stationary applications, but they are forced into regulatory frameworks that do not reflect their strengths or their risk profile. We should update national and industry standards to explicitly include zinc‑based chemistries, and the Zinc Battery Initiative is forming a working group with its members to advance this issue and encourage utilities, regulators, and developers to evaluate zinc systems on their merits rather than by the risks associated with lithium.
We also find for zinc battery developers that accessing pilot lines for testing continues to be an expensive hurdle to overcome. Using a national lab pilot line can cost more than $50,000 for one week of testing – too much for many developing companies. We are actively working with policymakers to lower the cost for battery manufacturers, so that they can reach the final stage of scaling up manufacture, where public policy can make or break an industry. Utilities are risk-averse by nature and need to be incentivized through funding and policy to try newer technologies, and we think that production tax credits, investment tax credits, or performance‑based incentives specifically designed for non‑lithium, long‑duration storage will motivate utilities to deploy zinc‑based system. Similar incentives exist for well-established lithium technology, so targeting non-lithium technologies would level the playing field.
Even though the zinc battery industry has progressed tremendously in recent years, the workshop reminded me of the need for continued government collaboration and support.
The change I observed in U.S. policy is a focus on developing a domestic zinc battery industry rather than advancing the energy transition, and this new focus should serve as wakeup call to other countries and regions. Asia also is supporting the battery industry, and our member GP Energy Tech is building its factory in the Johor-Singapore Special Economic Zone. Our goal is to push for similar movement in Europe, where zinc battery developers could benefit from the same funding and demonstration projects provided in Asia and North America.
With the most recent BloombergNEF report forecasting energy storage demand to grow 15-fold by 2030, fostering the growth zinc batteries and other safe, sustainable technologies through the targeted, intentional support discussed in our recent workshop is critical, not just in the U.S. but beyond.
Josef Daniel-Ivad leads the Zinc Battery Initiative (ZBI), a program launched by the International Zinc Association in 2020 to promote rechargeable zinc batteries’ remarkable story and encourage their further adoption. Members are the leading companies in the industry – each with proprietary technologies yet all sharing zinc as a common base to produce high-performance, safe, and environmentally sustainable batteries.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own, and do not necessarily reflect those held by pv magazine.
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.