Zinc8 Energy Solutions has secured C$15 million ($11.8 million) in equity financing to help to commercialise its zinc-air flow battery for large-scale electricity storage.
The Vancouver, Canada-based company closed its largest equity raise to date with private placement led by Raymond James and Haywood securities. The company is issuing 28,750,000 common shares at C$0.54 per share.
The company, which has a demonstration plant in Surrey, Vancouver, plans to begin production in early 2022.
In 2020 Zinc8 signed a deal to supply the New York Power Authority with a 100kW/1MWh battery.
In the Zinc8 system, electricity from the grid or renewables flows into the front end of the system to generate zinc particles, which are then stored in a tank filled with a liquid electrolyte. When power is needed, the stored zinc particles are delivered through a fuel cell to generate a flow of electrons and produce zinc oxide, which is then recycled back into the front end.
These types of batteries have been plagued with a problem of zinc dendrites forming on electrodes— something Zinc8 CEO Ron MacDonald says his company has solved.
MacDonald said that 60% to 70% of the cost of a vanadium flow battery is the vanadium, for zinc, it’s about 8%.
Flow batteries have been hailed as a long-duration storage solution for intermittent renewable energy because they can easily scale up to store large amounts of electricity almost indefinitely.
