Energy

World's first zinc-ion battery megafactory opens for business

Enerpoly's zinc-ion battery megafactory is set to hit full capacity production in 2026
Enerpoly's zinc-ion battery megafactory is set to hit full capacity production in 2026

Sweden’s Enerpoly has flung open the doors to its zinc-ion battery megafactory in the north of Stockholm – making it the first manufacturing facility to use this battery technology at a large scale in the world.

Dubbed the Enerpoly Production Innovation Center, the 70,000-sq-ft (6,500-sq-m) factory is designed to achieve a capacity throughput of 100 MWh annually. That’ll be in a couple of years though: while the company has begun commissioning already, it’s slated to reach full production capacity only in 2026.

According to Enerpoly, this megafactory will serve Europe’s needs for safe energy storage, and also utilize an all-European supply chain to boot.

Oh, so you're too good for lithium-ion now?

If you're wondering why Enerpoly is bothering with zinc-ion and not lithium-ion batteries, it's because the former is a better choice for storage in several ways:

The big asterisk

This all sounds great, except zinc-ion batteries fall behind lithium-ion batteries when it comes to energy density. A quick bit of math looking at Enerpoly's zinc-ion cell shows its energy density is a modest 106.4 Wh/kg. Not that you'd directly compare them, but as a reference point, Tesla's 4680-type battery cell is estimated at somewhere between 244-296 Wh/kg.

Enerpoly's zinc-ion battery cell
Enerpoly

So while you won't get the highest energy density possible, you can look forward to cheaper, greener, and easier-to-live-with energy storage from Enerpoly's new plant. The company says its batteries are suited for 2-10 hour durations, discharging energy over moderate periods. That makes them useful for shifting energy loads from peak to off-peak hours and building more resilient power grids.

Source: Enerpoly

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Flipboard
  • LinkedIn
5 comments
TechGazer
There are plenty of applications where energy density is not important. I'd like a cost-effective battery for my solar system. If it has a long lifespan, it can be buried ... and benefit from stable temperature.
Techutante
Agreed, anyplace you have the space for 2-3 of them instead say in a car, no reason you can't use them if the price is right.
DavidB
"Sweden’s Enerpoly [is] ... the first manufacturing facility to use this battery technology at a large scale in the world."

So, the manufacturing facility runs on zinc ion batteries?
Catweazle
I find it hard to understand why the nickel-iron battery is not more popular for static storage, it has many very positive properties.
Karmudjun
Thanks for an update on the battery manufacturing world. While substantially lower voltage potential, zinc has a larger presence on our planet and recycling can produce about 1/3rd of our current zinc usage. So utilizing it in a 20 year battery may be something for our "green" approach to life as we know it. The Pennsylvania plant run by Eos has a 540 megawatt-hour annual production goal, as reported in September 2023. And no, they run on our power grid, not on the batteries they are producing. The fact that a Swedish firm is shooting for 100 Megawatt Hour annual production is great as well - by 2026. I wonder how Eos' manufacturing is going?