Gelion Technologies
Professor Thomas Maschmeyer and his team have attracted investment worth in excess of $14 million from Australian investors and Armstrong Energy, a major British solar energy company, to fast-track commercialisation of the new zinc-bromine battery.
Gelion is in an exciting phase of its development program for battery systems. With their London-based counterparts, they are well advanced in planning their commercialisation and supply-chain strategies from initial prototypes all the way through to demonstrating commercial production capacity by 2020.
Gelion expects that the new batteries will be based on the small, low-cost, cell that can be organised into flexible configurations, depending on the required application. This could be for street lights, domestic use, commercial building and in grid support.
Gelion relies in part on Professor Maschmeyer’s breakthrough design of nanostructured gels that can challenge existing technologies in terms of safety, durability and price.
“The idea is to build houses with our fire-safe batteries included as part of their structure. This means consumers will be ready to take advantage of rapidly improving solar-energy technology. The batteries will also serve as a buffer for the grid, enabling an ever greater share of renewables to be connected, while grid stability is maintained.”