New York City-based Eos Energy Storage, bolstered by a $1 million award from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), plans to ramp up manufacturing of its low-cost zinc hybrid cathode (ZnythTM) battery technology.
The award arrives as Eos is in the midst of raising Series C funding to support a further scale-up of manufacturing and broader commercial availability of its products in 2016. The company closed its $15 million in Series B funding in May 2013 with NRG Ventures and Fisher Brothers as the lead investors.
Eos produces cost-effective energy storage solutions said to be less expensive than other battery technologies, as well as less alternatives to batteries currently in use, such as gas turbines for peak power generation and transmission and distribution assets for delivery capacity.
Its flagship product zinc-air batteries, it describes as the first low-cost, long-life, and most inherently safe, energy dense, and highly efficient aqueous battery available.
Eos Energy Storage and Incodema Group announced that they had partnered to launch MW-scale manufacturing of Eos’s ZnythTM battery technology, as reported last November. Eos’s 1MW/6MWh Aurora energy storage system is designed to integrate renewable energy production, increase the electricity grid’s efficiency and resiliency, and reduce utility companies’ costs and consumers’ electricity bills. Incodema Group, a NY-based manufacturer, offers equipment and capabilities required to scale emerging technologies from design to production.
The $1 million NYSERDA award will also support performance and reliability testing of Eos’s ZnythTMbattery technology at the BEST Test and Commercialization Center in Rochester, NY., the press release also noted, adding that this will fuel the acceleration of the commercialization of Eos’s 1MW/6MWh Aurora energy storage system.
The BEST Test and Commercialization Center facility was established via a partnership between DNV GL (formerly DNV KEMA), a global energy consultancy, and the New York Battery and Energy Storage Technology Consortium (NY-BEST), an industry-led coalition of corporate, entrepreneurial, academic, and government partners seeking to build a more advanced battery and energy storage sector, from R&D to commercialization, in New York State.
Eos is planning to test its Aurora energy storage system at a Con Edison facility in mid-2014, with an eye toward demonstrating the value of distributed energy storage in reducing costs associated with construction of new generation, transmission, and distribution infrastructure required to serve peak electricity demand.
The strategy: to leverage the tests with Con Edison to create a platform to the stage for additional demonstration projects with Eos’s other utility partners under its Genesis program. NRG, American Electric Power, National Grid, GDF Suez and Enel are among the partners.
