The Canadian Company Impacting New York’s Renewable Energy Plan
By: Jan Cavelle
Tags: Sustainability, Innovation, Entrepreneurship, Renewable Energy, Zinc

The future for this renewable energy company is very bright indeed

The technology at work, courtesy of Zinc8

In February 2020, the New York Power Authority asked companies to apply to supply batteries to help with better power supply. There were over a hundred applicants and only sixty qualified. Ron MacDonald, CEO of the Canadian company Zinc8 heard nothing more until they invited him to New York to chat. Nothing was said about the outcome until someone at the end of the meeting mentioned that Zinc8 was the last man standing.

Ron asked, “Hold on. Do you mean we have won?”. And they had. The New York Power Authority has signed a deal for a Zinc8 100kW/1MWh battery to benefit a large site such as municipal buildings or college campuses. It will deliver huge savings.

Once that was announced, other utility companies followed suit, and Zinc8’s phones started ringing. A second award followed in the private sector, winning another order, this one for a battery to be sited in Brooklyn with the support of New York agency NYSERDA.

The power supply in New York is incredibly inadequate. Superstorm Sandy showed just how exposed the city is. They have massive blackouts. Governor Andrew Cuomo vowed to produce 100% of New York’s electricity from clean sources by 2040.

To generate ideas to achieve this, the NYC Department of Buildings held its inaugural Carbon Neutrality Innovation Challenge 2020. Zinc8 entered but had been so busy that when they got in contact, Simon came to Ron and said, “There are some people who need a five-minute presentation from you.”

Ron did the presentation and despite the last-minute warning, Zinc8 won yet again. Zinc8 will now be written into the NYC building code 2020, which again has resulted in huge exposure. The Building Codes are incredibly challenging in New York, and the fines are enormous. They are now inundated with inquiries from big builders and large corporations.

Another highly unusual step Ron has taken is to win a place at an NYC incubator. The ACRE incubator is New York’s premier cleantech incubator and part of the Tandon School of Engineering. It only takes twenty companies at a time, each for about two years. Zinc8 is the only non-US company there, the only one already floated, and one of the closest to commercialization.

Ron says they love it. Their mentor Pat Sapinsley is so well connected, which is especially useful to them as New York outsiders. For them to supply within the U.S., she introduced them to senior people in the Ministry of Defence’s office, contacts they could never have achieved. They even have an office in New York now as part of this deal, though Ron has yet been able to visit it due to COVID.

How Zinc8’s technology works:

In case, like myself, you know little about zinc-air batteries before, these are metal-air batteries powered by oxidizing zinc with oxygen from the air. Traditionally, they have high energy densities and are relatively inexpensive to produce. But Zinc8 has turned them into something far more disruptive.

Zinc’s battery technology uses zinc and air as fuel. Zinc8 have taken zinc batteries one step further by separating energy and storage so users can add a tank, not a stack. This means vast quantities of energy can be economically stored and called upon on request.

There is a three-part process involved. First, zinc particles are generated in the Zinc Regenerator. Then the particles are transported to the Storage Tank and are maintained in a potassium hydroxide electrolyte until needed.

When that happens, the particles are delivered to the Power Stack and re-combined with the oxygen to generate electricity. The zinc oxide by-product is then returned to the Storage Tank. This results in a cost-effective solution for energy storage and provides energy whenever it is needed.

The energy sector is looking for disruptive solutions. Batteries solve many of the issues other renewable energy sources face. Batteries still release energy where there is no water and no wind and are massively more efficient. Wind farms, for example, only capture about 30% of their energy.

While economic for up to 6 hours, lithium-ion batteries need more of their Li-ion stacks to last longer, and at that point become hugely more expensive for large supply compared to Zinc8’s. There is no thermal runway with zinc batteries so they are non-flammable as well as being non-toxic and can be safely sited within buildings.

Courtesy of Zinc8

So who is Zinc8?

The world is desperate for environmentally friendly and efficient power solutions and Zinc8 is showing itself to be a leader. The company trades in Canada on the CSE.

Its current success (and exceptionally bright future) is all the more incredible given its less than glorious past. It was founded in 1995 in Silicon Valley, creating batteries intended for automobile and telecom backup applications, and in 2004, it was acquired by Teck Resources, one of the largest mining companies. In 2013, Teck reinstated the development and the company was then called ZincNyx. ZincNyx since then has completely reinvented the technology to adopt the market, which has been demanding energy storage systems to enable full market penetration for renewable energies.

Unlike the U.S., there is little start-up funding in Canada, so this still held the company back. Teck looked at this offshoot company that wasn’t at market-stage with concern when mining hit a bad patch and all funding scarce. They discovered that the batteries didn’t even need much zinc to run, meaning their offshoot would never become the customer they had envisaged. £5m a year was looking like a terrible investment. As things tottered on, the end of the line seemed inevitable.

The technology was then bought by a Canadian junior mining company, MGX Minerals. It was renamed MGX Renewables but still failed to bring anything to market due to the lack of providing consistent funding support for the research and development effort.

Some 2–3 years previously, a friend had come to Ron and asked his advice about investing in the company. Ron had told him to avoid it as there was no hope for anything very significant coming out of zinc batteries in the near-term. However, another friend convinced Ron to give it a second look, and he became intrigued.

Everyone he spoke to suggested he should take MGX Renewables on and sort it out. It took Ron a while to decide, but in January 2019, he joined as their Board of Directors Chairman. Later that year he was named President and CEO in the transition to taking the company public. The company was renamed Zinc8 Energy Solutions, and Ron set it on the road to success.

The Demand in the Market

Countries everywhere are pushing for renewable energy solutions so they can meet carbon neutral targets. Electric car manufacturers have now ironed out most of their problems to be ready for the changeover. However, the actual supply pipeline for the electricity cannot handle the amount of power that will be needed. As we race over to electrification, local storage of power is the only possible way the utility companies can reduce the massive investment needed to beef up their supply chains and global demand for economic answers is rocketing as deadlines for becoming carbon neutral get shorter.

The market for the batteries is staggering large. Zinc8 are protecting their technology. They have twenty U.S. patents and another four pending. Ron told me “I have never been involved in anything that excites him as much as Zinc8 — and he has had a pretty exciting life”.

What Next

Zinc8 went public just over a year ago to help push forward. Despite and during COVID, Ron has added an additional ten people and approved five more test batteries to be made as testers to ensure the product is the very best it can be.

When I was chatting with Ron, their first battery was just being finished in the 20-foot container, within their current lab and offices. It is destined for a house just outside Vancouver designed by award-winning architects. Smaller batteries, starting at 20kW, could reach the market late in 2021. The super-size ones will be brought to market globally in 2023, creating many tech-sector jobs.

The components can be mass-produced quickly and cheaply anywhere globally. Zinc8 will not be doing the manufacturing, other than the production of a few components that hold patented trade secrets.

What Ron does not have is a sales force. His solution is to partner with manufacturers in Europe, South America, Asia, the Middle East, and Australia, and deals are now progressing for each area. They have already signed a letter of intent with an Indian transformer maker, Vijai Electricals. Ron gives credit to the Canadian Trade Commissioners in these markets, in helping facilitate discussions with their active, developing partnerships.

The future for this renewable energy company is very bright indeed.