Keele University To Trial UK-Made Zinc Battery In UK First

Keele University is to trial a new type of UK-made battery on its campus, in what the partners behind the project say is a UK first.

The university has signed a memorandum of understanding with UK battery firm Offgrid Energy Labs to trial a ZincGel long-duration energy storage battery, the partners announced this week.

They say it will be the UK's first zinc long-duration energy storage project using a battery made entirely in Britain.

The pilot will run in a fully islanded setup at Keele's Low Carbon Energy Generation Park.

It will test whether the system can store about 1MWh of surplus renewable energy each month, and check its safety, depth of discharge and round-trip performance.

Results from the trial will feed into plans for a larger, multi-megawatt-hour installation at Keele.

According to Solar Power Portal, the energy park has two wind turbines and supplies up to 50% of the campus's electricity.

The batteries are made in Hook, Hampshire, at a facility that opened in July, the website reported.

Tejas Kusurkar, co-founder of Offgrid Energy Labs, said: "We are pleased to announce our first pilot of ZincGel technology, in partnership with Keele University. The pilot is designed to show that the UK can manufacture long-duration batteries domestically, using a chemistry that needs no lithium, cobalt or nickel and no capex-heavy manufacturing infrastructure."