The New York Power Authority (NYPA) announced plans last week to install a demonstration zinc-air energy storage system in collaboration with developer Zinc8 Energy Solutions. According to foreign media, this 100 kW/1 MWh energy storage project stems from an "innovation challenge" undertaken by NYPA last year, using it as a backup power supply to meet the needs of the power grid.

    Alan Ettlinger, NYPA's Director of Technology Development and Innovation, stated that the zinc-air project is part of achieving New York's long-term energy goals. The state's targets include 100% zero-carbon electricity by 2040, reaching 6 GW of distributed solar energy by 2025, installing 3 GW of energy storage by 2030, and achieving 9 GW of offshore wind by 2035.

    Zinc-air battery technology is attractive due to its low cost. It is made of widely available and abundant materials and is easy to dispose of. "The toxicity of zinc is very low, so the impact on battery costs and battery handling has sparked interest in studying zinc-air batteries and promoting the development of zinc," Ettlinger said. Part of the reason NYPA chose zinc-air battery technology is that it has advanced further in research and carries no fire safety hazards, making it suitable for practical energy storage.

   NYPA President and CEO Gil Quiniones said in an interview, "This collaboration will showcase a low-cost and long-duration solution that addresses the unpredictability of renewable energy sources like wind and solar, bringing environmental and efficiency advantages."

   The project will be built in western New York, and NYPA is currently looking for a final possible deployment location, expecting to choose the site in the first quarter of 2020 and complete installation of the system in 2022. Meanwhile, related departments said that the company is developing actual energy storage containers and controls for the unit. After piloting the project, NYPA plans to research scaling up to larger batteries and ultimately develop them to grid scale.

   Industry insiders believe that with research on battery technology and industry development, zinc-air battery technology will show tremendous promise.

   Meanwhile, Fabio Albano, Vice President of Technology for zinc-air battery developer NantEnergy, believes that zinc-air batteries are more suitable for certain applications than other batteries. He says that zinc-air battery technology is not a powerful technology for deploying three-hour energy storage but is an excellent choice for long-duration energy storage, such as accumulating solar energy during the day and deploying it during inactive renewable energy nights.

   Albano thinks, "Zinc-air batteries play an essential role in low-cost deployment. The main problem with lithium-ion batteries entering grid energy storage is that there is no lithium battery system in the world capable of supporting grid scale, and deploying two would be too expensive."

   It is understood that NantEnergy built a 95.1 kWh zinc-air energy storage system for Duke Energy, serving as part of a microgrid to assist the emergency communication power supply in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in the United States.

   Full Text from Lithium Battery Network.