Although the lithium battery is still the queen of power generators, alternatives are being sought that are easier to develop, friendly to the environment, without affecting the pocket of users and maintaining performance. The United States is promoting a: the zinc-bromine battery.
The US Department of Energy invests 500 million dollars in this alternative, to become a cheaper and more sustainable option.
The investment is made in the company Eos Energy with the AMAZE Project (American Made Zinc Energy), that could annually produce up to 8 gigawatt hours (GWh) of storage capacity by 2026.
According to officials, it is enough to instantly feed to more than 300,000 American homes, o satisfy the annual electricity needs of about 130 thousand homes.
“Project AMAZE would expand the United States supply chain, which Eos believes has sufficient domestic supply to qualify for the Domestic Content Bonus granted by the Investment Tax Credit,” the company notes. “Eos aims to move to 100% US-sourced material by 2026.”
The basis of everything is store wind and solar energy for later use. The difficulty of accessing lithium means that alternatives are being sought for this type of battery, and the zinc-bromine option is one of them.
Eos developed the Eos Z3 battery with zinc-based cathodes along with a water-based electrolyte. In accordance with the MIT Technology Review, this increases its stability, making it difficult to undergo combustion.
A zinc-bromine battery would have a useful life of up to 20 years, surpassing by 10 or 5 years the option of the lithium battery.
Finally, Zinc is the fourth most produced metal in the world, which minimizes the dependence on lithium in the future.
According to the Department of Energy, “Today’s market for energy storage is nascent, but it is growing rapidly, being dominated by by lithium-ion and lithium-iron-phosphate battery technologies, which are normally used for short duration applications (approximately 4 hours)”.
“Eos’s technology is also specifically designed for grid-scale long-duration stationary battery storage. that can help meet the growing demand on power grids with increasing amounts of renewable energy penetration,” he added.