Zinc8 Energy Solutions (CSE:ZAIR) Inc said it ended the second quarter of 2022 with a working capital balance of $4.5 million as it reported financial results for the period ending June 30, 2022.
"We're seeing a great deal of interest in our company and related technology and remain focused on building out our future," Ron McDonald, president and CEO of Zinc8 Energy Solutions said in a statement.
"We've completed some early product tests that have given us takeaways and we continue to work on the geographical expansion news featuring Zinc8 in the press. We have a great and hardworking team focused on delivering the next steps in product development in anticipation of our commercial product launch over the next 12 to 18 months," he added.
READ: Zinc8 Energy has US Senate majority leader Charles Schumer’s support to establish battery making plant in Ulster
Highlights during the second quarter included:
- On June 7, 2022, Storm Boswick joined Zinc8's board of directors. Boswick has considerable experience in the investment sector and capital markets holding senior positions.
- Selected as a "Best-in-Class" solution in the Energy Storage Category for the Real Estate Board of New York's 2022 PropTech Challenge.
- On April 7, 2022, the company announced that it had named Bernard Pinsky, Q.C. to its board of directors. Pinsky is currently the chair of the board and a founding director of the Ronald S. Roadburg Foundation, one of the largest philanthropic foundations in British Columbia.
Additionally, on July 8, 2022, the company announced support from the US Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-NY) for Zinc8 to establish a manufacturing facility in Ulster, New York's former TechCity site location.
Corporate update
The company has been in an early-stage development program of an advanced energy storage system with a major North American cloud service provider.
Having completed the testing phase, Zinc8 highlighted the following:
- Steady Recharge and Discharge Demonstration: the zinc-air energy storage system (ZESS) was cycled repeatedly and achieved multiple long-duration discharges of 6-plus hours fundamentally illustrating the long-duration technology.
- Standby and Transition to Discharge: the ZESS has successfully demonstrated the ability to completely discharge at the 100% internally-targeted rate from a state of transition demonstrating the ZESS's responsiveness and reliability to provide power on demand.
- Step-up and Step-down Transient Response and Start-up Time to Discharge: the battery's response time to increasing and decreasing the load on the circuit achieved the desired outcome.
- Standby Loss Characterization: Parasitic power loss due to maintaining the ZESS in standby mode was tested and used as a measure of the efficiency of the complete system.
- Power Electronic Controls: The ZESS has been successfully integrated with power electronics systems allowing for a greater understanding of pertinent factors that the power electronics may have on the development of a reliable, cost-effective and energy-efficient product.
- Fluidizer Core System: The Fluidizer Core System's design which is one of the three key components of the ZESS was validated.
- Zinc Regeneration System: The system was built with a high yield to achieve the unique functionality of zinc generation and removal in a fully sealed multicell stack.
- Cell Stack Characteristics: Improvements to the design of the cell stacks were implemented to achieve higher output. Furthermore, the Company's proprietary cathode, which is fundamentally critical to the power rating and energy efficiency of the system, achieved the projected performance.
"Over the course of 14 months working with our partner, Zinc8 had designed, procured, and built a series of batteries that were integrated with power electronics to form a complete energy storage system," said Dr Simon Fan, CTO and VP of Product Management for Zinc8 Energy Solutions.
"The opportunity to showcase the technology to our partner and internally identify any room for engineering improvement has been instrumental to the success of building both the business relationship and technical core competency. Putting these batteries to the test has allowed Zinc8's engineering team to gain confidence in forming a scalable energy storage system for manufacturing and receive affirmation in eventually providing a unique energy solution to our potential customers in the pipeline worldwide. Zinc8 and the cloud service provider will continue to work together and share developmental information," Dr Fan added.
Market Outlook
On August 16, 2022, US President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act, bringing with it tax incentives and other measures widely expected to significantly boost prospects for energy storage deployment, the company noted.
Most directly relevant to the company is the introduction of an investment tax credit for standalone energy storage. That can lower the capital cost of equipment by about 30%. For the upstream battery and energy storage system value chains, there are also tax incentives for siting production within the US, much like the incentives that exist for wind and solar PV manufacturers that source or manufacture their products domestically, the company noted.
Zinc8 specializes in flow battery technology that relies on regenerating zinc particles to store and dispatch energy. The company focuses on developing and commercializing its low-cost, long-duration ZESS for utilities, microgrid, and commercial and industrial markets.
Contact the author at jon.hopkins@proactiveinvestors.com