Solar Power World spoke with Carl Mansfield, VP of system solutions for NantEnergy, about the company’s attempt to take zinc-air batteries mainstream. NantEnergy, which acquired Sharp’s energy storage division and its lithium know-how last year, is improving a zinc-air/lithium hybrid storage system for the C&I and microgrid markets. Mansfield said that finding the perfect cost-effective, long-duration chemistry setup will be key to energy storage deployments taking off even more.
SPW: What energy storage offerings does NantEnergy have available?
Mansfield: Our primary in-house product is the zinc-air rechargeable battery. That solution is already deployed around the world in about 3,000 operating systems. Most are in remote microgrid deployments, electrifying rural areas. We have a lot of systems deployed in Indonesia. In Central America, we have a lot of the hybrid systems, which combine zinc-air with small amounts of lithium, that are deployed at telecom applications. Zinc-air’s sweet spot really is long-duration resilience or as an off-grid system. It’s very competitive in price against lead-acid and also against diesel generation.
We also are working on some new chemistries that are better suited to shorter duration. Last fall, my group, which was originally part of Sharp Electronics Corporation, was acquired by NantEnergy. We brought Sharp’s behind-the-meter commercial and industrial energy storage solution (SmartStorage), and we’re continuing to promote and sell our C&I behind-the-meter product, which is designed for economic ROI to the system owner based off utility savings and other revenue opportunities. So we have a variety of battery chemistries that we’re supplying. We’re targeting C&I and microgrids.
SPW: What is the configuration for NantEnergy’s hybrid zinc-air/lithium batteries?
Mansfield: You can combine the battery cells at a rack-level. We’re shipping a single rack that has lithium and zinc-air inside it, and it behaves like a single 48-volt battery rack. Or, if the system is large enough, you can also have a dozen zinc-air racks and a half-dozen lithium racks integrated through inverters at the AC level. There are a number of different architectural options. Most of what we’ve shipped historically in Central America is through the telecom market and is integrated at the rack level.
SPW: What is contributing to increased interest in energy storage in the United States?
Mansfield: There are three major factors. The first is the fundamental cost of the battery technology itself has been coming down so dramatically in the last three to five years that the cost effectiveness is becoming much stronger. The second is that the capital providers who finance projects are starting to become a little bit more familiar with the technology, more comfortable with it. The third is end-customers are also starting to become more comfortable with the applications and the value that these systems provide. If you look in the C&I segment, historically most commercial customers had a sense of how solar delivered but didn’t really know what a battery would do for them in terms of saving energy bills. I think that’s starting to become a little bit more understood by more and more commercial businesses.
SPW: What needs to change to promote further energy storage deployments?
Mansfield: If the technology improves, that always helps. We’re gradually getting to the stage where more longer duration battery storage is required both for energy savings as well as backup. What’s key right now to helping the market grow is getting a very cost-effective, longer duration storage. Lithium battery storage is still relatively expensive. Going from a two-hour to a six-hour installation substantially increases the cost. We believe that our longer duration (zinc) technology coupled with some of the shorter durations like lithium and others can be quite effective at getting over that hurdle. Although the market is starting to become more familiar with the technology, there’s still a ways to go in terms of marketing and educating the market to these type of products.
SPW: Will residential or large-scale storage lead the charge?
Mansfield: Residential has always been kind of slow and a bit of a niche. I think the problem with residential is that until the residential systems can pay for themselves in savings they generate, it’s always going to be a niche driven by consumers who are concerned about outage protection. The U.S. grid is so stable in general that even though people are concerned about that, it’s something they can live with. A couple of short outages a year are not really a major burden. Residential has potential, but I think it’s going to continue to be slow until the prices improve.
Commercial and industrial — right now we can get, in some cases, less than a two-year payback period. The economics are really strong. I think we’re going to see more regions of the United States beyond California and the Northeast open up with very favorable economics. We’re going to see a trend toward systems of longer duration that can provide economic benefit as well as a backup function to allow business-critical systems to continue to operate during an outage.
I see large-scale deployment of distributed storage becoming longer and longer duration on the utility side. Many of these large multi-megawatt-hour installations are going to continue to be deployed. After a while, it’s going to become problematic with citing from a transmission interconnection point of view. Our vision for the U.S. is fairly widespread deployment of storage across buildings on the distribution system with many applications ranging from energy saving to critical backup to powered emergency response centers to telecom backup.
SPW: Will lithium still be the dominant chemistry?
Mansfield: I think lithium will be one of the dominant chemistries. Lithium has two major challenges. One is the fire hazard. There are still concerns in certain regions with the potential of runaway fires with this technology even when it’s deployed very safely and most likely won’t have issues. If you look at New York in particular, lithium is still not able to be deployed in many of the buildings [because of] the fire hazards. The second issue is it needs to be cooled. The cost to maintain the batteries in the most favorable operating temperature can be fairly significant. As energy costs rise, that’s going to be become more of a factor. Our zinc-based battery systems don’t require active cooling, so they don’t have those disadvantages. And then recycling is going to begin to rear its head. Many of the large-scale grid-interconnected lithium batteries are not even close to end-of-life yet, so the start of the recycling hurdles for them is going to come in a few years.
That said, there’s huge investment behind lithium. [Being] a primary battery type used in electric vehicles is helping the innovation and the cost reduction [efforts]. So with all those factors, I think lithium will continue to be a major player, but we’re pretty confident that zinc-based chemistries can break in as a major player as well.
badbrain says
I don’t like this guy. They have put all their focus on welfare for the 3rd World and entirely ignored the US consumer. I say his statement is wrong that he expects little demand from the US public until solar power gets really cheap or utilities become less reliable. In case he doesn’t know the solar panels are actually the cheapest part of the system. The inverters and other hardware doesn’t add that much to the cost. The obstacle then is his batteries. Then how can the 3rd World afford them? One also can notice he doesn’t want comments showing on youtube.
Mike Kendall says
The obvious is they want to use hybrid lithium with it to get higher discharge rates….not necessarily high charge rates as this system is supposed to be extremely efficient on the charging cycle so likely charging is fast. I read somewhere else they are using not only lithium hybrid but also banks of super/ultra caps so that for me answers the fast discharge hybrid coupled with the zinc air. What is important is there’s a billionaire financing/owning the company. As long as the approaches are sound the money talks and the bs walks. The money will allow the company to storm slow development and ultimately succeed in a careful planned out manner. I’ve been to their web page and the cost is not listed from what I can see just a contact form. This is a red flag for me. 3,000 installations is not allot in the world of renewable energy. Since they are mfg. now in Indonesia why can’t I go to a renewable energy store and buy a system? Are they only available in 48v or can we get it in 24v (commonly used by military) as well? I would think so. Last….nobody is talking about charge controllers with these. Can I take a lead acid charge controller and use it with this system? Why aren’t there QA pages that answer all these questions? It is like an “only child” that is sheltered by it’s parents growing up differently than a family with lets say three kids spaced out by a year or two. Too many questions un answered even if I really want to buy this battery bank for our factory and it’s solar panels lots of un answered questions not being answered publicly.
Solarman says
This guy’s talking in circles. First he reveals his company has bought out Sharp’s Energy storage division. Then he talks about a “hybrid” of Lithium ion battery technology being used with the Zinc/air battery technology as a system. Later on he pontificates as to how the zinc/air doesn’t need all of the cooling and monitoring of the battery pack like lithium ion storage needs.
I have to wonder if the zinc/air battery has the slow to discharge and slow to charge characteristics that one would entertain putting in a fast charge/discharge technology to offset demand surges from the grid. As this technology is being rolled out, we will see if the industry wants such a hybrid.
N.Ananthaswamy says
Another thinking is that the mountains by the side of sea be used to make sea water reservoir on top and salt resistant metal turbines be used.Sea water should be pumped to reservoir up the mountain by solar energy during sunshine – solar panels of suitable size -double the capacity of pumped storage so that during sunshine hours power be supplied to users as well pumping from sea to up mountain storage facility be done simultaneously.during non sunshine hours pumped storage will start working and supply power to consumers.