Battery seen as step to carbon-free grid

Cheaper than lithium, runs on zinc and air

Lithium-ion batteries have become essential for powering electric cars and storing energy generated by solar panels and wind turbines. But their drawbacks are also by now familiar: They use scarce minerals, are vulnerable to fires and explosions, and are pricey.

A plentiful, safe and more affordable alternative would be worth a lot. On Wednesday, an energy company headed by the California billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong unveiled a rechargeable battery operating on zinc and air that can store power at what it says is far less than the cost of lithium-ion batteries.

Tests of the zinc energy-storage systems have helped power villages in Africa and Asia as well as cellphone towers in the United States for the last six years, without any backup from utilities or the electric grid, SoonShiong said.

“It could change and create completely new economies using purely the power of the sun, wind and air,” Soon-Shiong, a surgeon and a biotechnology entrepreneur, said in an interview in Los Angeles before the announcement.

Soon-Shiong and his company, NantEnergy, are presenting the product at the One Planet Summit in New York, an event meant to further the goals of the Paris climate accords.

The battery units, in conjunction with solar arrays, can be combined to create a microgrid system powering a village or a larger area, Soon-Shiong said. They have been deployed at more than 1,500 sites supporting 110 villages in nine countries in Asia and Africa — including places that otherwise relied on generators or even lacked electricity, he said.

The batteries have also been used to power communications towers, including a Duke Energy location in North Carolina that withstood the effects of hurricane Florence recently and hurricane Irma last year.

The International Finance Corp., an arm of the World Bank fostering private-sector projects in developing countries, was an early investor in NantEnergy.The U.S. Department of Energy made development grants to NantEnergy (formerly known as Fluidic Energy) totalling $5 million, Soon-Shiong said.

Soon-Shiong’s company says it is the first to commercialize the use of zinc air batteries and has more than 100 related patents. Soon-Shiong said the cost of his zinc air battery had dropped steadily since development began.

NantEnergy says the technology costs less than $100 per kilowatt-hour, a figure that some in the energy industry have cited as low enough to transform the electric grid into a round-theclock carbon-free system.