Offgrid Energy Labs, Keele University Join Hands for ZincGel Battery

Offgrid Energy Labs has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Keele University to deploy its India-developed ZincGel long-duration energy storage technology at the university’s campus in the UK.

Under the partnership, ZincGel batteries manufactured at Offgrid Energy Labs’ facility in Hook, Hampshire, will be deployed as part of a pilot project at Keele University’s Low Carbon Energy Generation Park.

The project will demonstrate the use of non-lithium long-duration energy storage in a renewable energy environment and is expected to become the UK’s first zinc long-duration energy storage project using batteries manufactured entirely in the country.

The pilot will deploy a ZincGel battery system in a fully islanded configuration. The project will assess the technology’s ability to capture and store around 1 MWh of surplus renewable energy each month, while evaluating safety, depth of discharge and round-trip performance under real operating conditions.

The project will also assess performance against seasonal variations in renewable generation and examine the potential of ZincGel technology to reduce renewable energy curtailment.

The findings are expected to support the development of a proposal for a larger, multi-MWh ZincGel deployment at Keele University to absorb excess and otherwise curtailed renewable generation across the campus.

ZincGel was developed by Offgrid Energy Labs in India and uses proprietary zinc-bromine chemistry for stationary long-duration energy storage. The technology is designed for a 6-to-16-hour discharge window, allowing surplus renewable energy to be stored and shifted to periods of higher demand.

The technology uses zinc and bromine instead of lithium, cobalt, nickel and rare earth materials and is designed to be non-flammable. Offgrid Energy Labs is developing ZincGel for renewable energy integration, industrial energy resilience, microgrids and grid-scale energy storage.

Keele University’s Low Carbon Energy Generation Park includes two wind turbines and supplies up to 50 percent of the campus’s electricity.