In this conversation, Kerim Baran of SolarAcademy hosts Mike Burz, the CEO & Co-founder of Enzinc, a potential game-changer in Energy Storage, and Jon Bonanno of Strategic Operating Partners.

This is a deep conversation about global energy dysfunction, energy manipulation, global wars & violence resulting from the centralization of energy as well as the potential future solutions including the decarbonization of energy infrastructure, distributed power systems, and most importantly the one key missing element to a better energy future: Sustainable energy storage solutions (e.g. advanced batteries). In this talk, we tried to bring forth a systems-level honesty about the good, the bad, and the ugly elements of various types of energy storage solutions.

Currently, Lithium-based Energy solutions seem to be the winning formula in the energy storage market. Having said that, we are still in the early days of an energy transformation that will happen over the next decades. In this conversation, you will hear about the history and evolution of the energy storage market, the pros and cons of lithium-based storage solutions as well as the benefits of a Zinc-based solution like Enzinc’s.

The full transcript of the conversation can be found here:

SolarAcademy:

Hi everyone. This is Kerim, Kerim with SolarAcademy. Today I have with me again, Mike Burz of, Enzinc. And, Jon Bonanno, who’s a senior advisor to Enzinc, as well as a number of other Cleantech startups. Recently, Jon, you and I were on a call and you are explaining the amazing facts about the battery storage landscape.  And what do you call it? The lies?

Jon Bonanno:

Well, there’s, there’s, you know, an energy storage, there are lies, damn lies, and marketing. I think we should also start with acknowledging this very interesting moment around global energy dysfunction. And I have to say. I have a personal bit of PTSD around this issue because as a survivor of 9/11, the violence and the chauvinism and the centralization of energy was crystal clear that morning to me.

And we’re seeing this again. So sadly. 21 years later, or is it 20? Yeah, 21 years later, we’re seeing natural gas manipulation allow, an incredible aggression against, from one person against another person. And if we had defunded at high scale and velocity, the fossil economy at the postscript of 9/ 11, those attacks, we would be so far ahead on defunding the violence now that this would not be possible for Russia to do this.

And frankly, I have worries about other places in the world around energy manipulation, but in order to decarbonize at an extremely, extremely deep way, where you have massive amounts of solar, massive amounts of wind, I have a personal view that we have a requirement of modular, safe, nuclear, but if we’re going to do that, we have to decouple the intermittency of solar and wind resources and enable that clean electron to be stored and used when we need it.

So to be dispatchable and to be the highest value. And so you then have to think, all right, well, how are we going to use this in our mobility, in our homes, in our businesses, in our industry, how do we use it in a network?

It always requires superior energy storage, but energy storage system. Systems that you account for, from the beginning of the mining process, right through the end of life, and also must include what the application requires, temperature control systems, if required. Armour, if required, if someone’s going to jostle it around or shoot something at it. Complex battery systems, cause maybe this particular solution or another solution requires it to be treated like a very special little trinkety thing.

And if you mistreated in any way, bad things happen. So I think that it’s very sadly, there’s been a procession of marketing and communications around how lithium is going to solve everything. And that is utterly false. Entirely false. And frankly, very dangerous, not only because of the fires that are possible with lithium technologies and energy storage, but also because the supply chain from mining to processing is almost entirely controlled by one country and it’s China and I’m not Sinophobe.

In fact, I believe very strongly in partnerships, humanitarian pro partnerships, human to human partnerships. And so I’m not an anti China person. I’m simply saying it’s not good for humanity to have such a constriction on a key element.

SolarAcademy:

This whole conversation is about distributed energy distributed power.

And if we want a healthier planet, we do want distributed power and that applies to parts of the supply chain to be distributed as well.

Mike Burz:

And what John is talking about, Kerim, is not just, when we say distributed, we don’t mean distributed in terms of geographically, but we also mean hierarchically within, you know, a society for this to work.

Right. It’s not just one level that can have all the technology, right. Or all the chemistries. It has to be. You know, deepen broad throughout the society.

SolarAcademy:

That’s the premise of solar. I mean, right now we’re approaching a three, 4 million homes in the U S having solar, which is great. Three, 4%. Not quite at 30% like Australia, but we’re getting there, I think is going to go there very, very fast.

Jon Bonanno:

But you’re in your point, there is, is so valid is that the access to solar has happened because an incredible benefit of total cost of ownership, but factor in everything, do the honest thing around systems calculations. Right. You have to permit these things. You have to deal with. AHJs on getting approval.

You have to, you can’t have a fire. You can’t be visiting it every two weeks for maintenance reasons. You have to be able to, you know, be useful in a negative. 10 degrees, C environment and not break the thing you gotta be useful when it’s, you know, 40 plus C hot in the afternoon somewhere. Cause if you destroy the equipment in those situations, or if you have to run someone out to the remote place to go fix it, you’ve blown up the economics of it and you lose the access.

Access is not just CapEx. It’s not just OpEx, it’s total cost of ownership. And that means you have to be honest. Do we need temperature control systems here? Do we need insanely complex BMS battery management systems so that it doesn’t go haywire and hurt somebody? Um, do we need special protections?

Right. When you think about energy storage, you’re talking about a pretty high energy density for a mineral. And we’re doing quite artificial things that don’t happen in nature. Naturally when you use these elements minerals in this application. And for frankly, ever, since now, zinc has been characterized as an amazing energy carrier, but it has a characteristic.

If you don’t do something special about. To sort itself out. So really abundant, you know, mineral is everywhere, very low costs, totally accessible, no conflict in the supply chain, yada yada, yada. But if it dies on one use, you’d say not that useful. So this is I think the honesty that we need to bring to the energy storage conversation and to say…

The world started out in a big way towards NMC batteries. Right? They were the rage. Oh, geez. But yeah, you’re mining cobalt in the Congo with children. That’s not, not good. Right. Okay. So that’s not good. Um, and it also has a very, very high potential for fire and fire, not just like poof, but arc fire over extended periods of time that regular fire people have a lot of challenge putting out.

And it also off gases when it’s in fire a vapor that’s toxic. So not a good result. Then all of a sudden, the world invents China, predominantly LFP, lithium iron phosphate. Okay. Lower potential for fire. That’s great. Lower cost. Okay. That’s good. Here’s a little problem with that. Lithium is still controlled by one country.

One source. That’s a bit of a problem, but secondarily, this stuff doesn’t recycle. There’s no economic reason why someone would want to recycle this because you have to put extraordinary energy into an LFP cell or pack to break it apart. And also add a bunch of pretty hard harsh chemicals, that’s all cost.

And now what do you get? You get not battery level lithium out of it. You get iron and phosphorous,,, Hurray… all worth, basically nothing. So no one is going to invest in recycling, lithium, iron phosphate. What does the world get out of that? Landfill. Poisoned water. Hurray, we’re back to the fossil economy again, externalize your exhaust, you know, externalize your negative outcomes. That’s not where we’re going. That’s not where we can go.

 

SolarAcademy:

So solutions?

Jon Bonanno:

Well, I, you know, Mike, you know, you, you, this is, this is, this is a solution right here.

Mike Burz:

You know, Kerim, when we first talked, we kind of said, look, you know, the U S Navy was looking at something which was an alternative, right? So they’ve been playing around with lead acid batteries and playing around is the wrong term. They’ve actually, you know, a lead acid battery, very robust, right? Uh, it’s a legacy battery had been around for about 150 years, but it just takes up too much.

And it’s heavy. And so the Navy, as they’re moving toward a more digital Navy needs the room and you can’t just, you know, build more room aboard a submarine, right. Or a ship. So they said, listen, you know, we’ve, we’ve got lots of computers. We got needs for backup. We have power and so on and we need something that’s better.

And they started taking a look at lithium. Why not? They had a bad experience with a submarine, you know, and Boeing at a bad experience with their 787 and somebody, and this is kind of a perfect example to what John was saying is they took a look at the requirements of the cell and they said, look at all that fantastic energy and a little tiny space.

That means it’s really going to be lighter. Right? Well, like I said, the Navy lost the sub because guess what? Lithium batteries don’t really do well with saltwater. Right. And, and if you don’t manufacture them perfectly, uh, take Samsung, for example, you know, you, you, you burn not just a phone, but the car or whatever, that’s in it.

And the Navy lost, you know, a submarine. Now, this wasn’t a big summary, by the way, it was one that was a smaller submarine. But the fact is, you know, you can’t have that kind of thing happen. The same thing happened with. You know, engineering said, we’ve got this fantastic aircraft, 7 87, all composite aircraft.

we want to have the most lightweight, we can have all the systems. So they put a lithium-ion battery in there, a fire, uh, resulted. And I don’t know if I told you this last time, but my, my brother-in-law and his wife were to be on that airplane. Wow. They were supposed to be on that airplane. So it’s somewhat personal.

what Boeing discovered. Number one is the fire burned so hot that it completely destroyed the battery. So no forensics could take place. They couldn’t even determine what the cause of the fire was from an engineering point of view. That’s bad. Right? Because now you’ve got an open question. What caused that?

And if I don’t know what caused it, I don’t know how to fix it. Right, right. But Boeing’s fixed. Was, they said, listen, we can’t go back and put in all. Well, they could’ve put in a different type of battery chemistry, but they were already committed to doing that. So they built essentially an iron shroud, a stainless steel shroud around this battery.

And then to put that battery in there, two things had to happen. Number one, they had to put a really cool access panel on it because then, you know, the connector came out of the battery and plugged into the wall and then they had another one plugged into it. So now you’ve got a complex. And just your installation and then came, the question is, well, what happens if the battery does catch on fire?

And even though it’s in this really cool stainless steel shroud, what’s going to happen with it. So now they had to vent the gases, which meant you had to vend it overboard. Well, you just can’t drill hole through composite materials, right. And just put a hole in there. You got to design the structure to, to absorb both the, both the structural load, but also the high temperatures.

And you got to put in the system so that, you know, the thing can be vented without disturbing the aircraft air flow. That installation costs them over something like $400,000 per aircraft to retrofit it with this fan new shroud battery combination. And guess what? The total installation. So here was this battery, which was supposed to have a specific energy at the cell level of around something like around 120 or something like that, watt hours per kilogram.

But by the time you put all the equipment around there, it was 25 watt hours per kilogram. They could have put a lead acid battery in there and it would have been better. Right. That’s what John is talking about in terms of, you have to look at the total systems impact, right.

Jon Bonanno:

So, but to be to clear, Kerim, Enzinc does have a solution that unlocks zinc as a mineral to be used for superior batteries and energy storage.

And it can be in residential applications paired with solar. It can be in commercial installations, industrial, and it can be also used in mobility applications, but they’re not alone. Okay. There are other companies using other minerals. There are other mechanical solutions that are interesting, but we just, I think, need to break this.

Mike Burz:

And that was, that was going to be the point is that if you take a look, you know, what the Navy was looking at was for a safer alternative. And so they started looking at it and we’re the guys who team with them, you know, to help commercialize it. And, and it turns out that the same thing that the Navy is looking at in terms of a systems solution, for their ships and submarines and aircraft that should be used for this new energy economy.

And that’s kind of what John and I are trying to put there on the table, which is when you’re looking at an energy are cheaper than lead acid and lithium assign. And, but you can’t just look at it at the cell level, which is what everybody’s kind of doing. They’re saying, look at the awesome power of energy in that one little cell and you go fantastic.

But just like Boeing, who said, look at all the energy, that’s a cell that’s going to be lightweight and then it bit them. And they said no, by the time you look at the total installation of what’s required from not only just mining it and processing it and using it and then disposing of it. What is the right solution for that total?

In fact, we kind of use the term, you need to have an energy storage approach that matches the ethos of the industry. You’re trying to support

SolarAcademy:

Sustainability, right?

Mike Burz:

And so if you’re looking for sustainability and you’re looking for it, you know, not only in the manufacturing, but like I said, in the use by society, you know, all through society, then you’ve got to come up with a solution that’s going to fit.

Requirement. And so what we’re saying is yes, at the cell level, the zinc battery may not be as good as say, a lithium battery, like the NMC battery that’s used in my car. But once again, using the Boeing example, if I take an electric vehicle that only has to go less than two, 300 kilometers, if I put it into using an NMC.

I need thermal management that adds weight, right? So that what hours per kilogram starts to drop, we need a very sophisticated battery management system and all the sensors added weight drops again, armor to protect the battery, right. Drops against EVs have today. Exactly. And so when people say, look, the NMC battery has a specific energy of around 220 to 240 watt hours per kilogram.

By the time you put it in the car, it’s now down to around 130 watt hours per kilogram. Right. Right.

SolarAcademy:

So, I mean, this is kind of like the Microsoft OS versus apple iOS, because lithium seems like the Microsoft device, which has already taken off. Yes. How are you going to stop that?

Mike Burz:

It turned, it turns out though substandard.

Right. But, but the, the, the solution thing. If you actually now have to look at the total system solution and say, awesome, well, what are you going to do with that battery when you’re finished with it? And as John said, if you can’t economically recycle it, what does that mean? So as we move toward this renewable energy economy, the total cost, right? Of all the ancillary costs and stuff like that, someone’s going to have to bear those. And I don’t think. That that’s going to, that’s going to be swept under the rug for long.

SolarAcademy:

Yeah, government consciousness about this problem. It sounds like…

Jon Bonanno:

Well, it’s there. I mean, it already is there we’re hearing from major, major corporates and the largest waste manager in the world that they have looked very carefully at lithium iron phosphate, LSP cycling, and they’re deadly afraid that they’re going to have to deal with their big corporate customers, take all of our waste. And they’re going to get stuck with it. And that’s not good for them because their corporate ethos is around sustainability.

SolarAcademy:

So, curious question I have is, is Tesla bound by this lithium, uh, battery supply chain? Can. Eventually switch easily to I’m saying Tesla, but it really applies to any car…

Jon Bonanno:

But, but Mike, I think we will agree that Tesla is catering to the 1%. Right. Um, and they don’t plan. I don’t think to cater to anyone, but that for a very long time and you know, quite honestly it’s a great business for them to be in. I’m not going to argue that, but we’re talking about the democracy of energy, you need to have access. And so it has to be low cost, not only CapEx, but OpEx, too. When you look at the total cost, let’s just look at emissions for a moment. When you compare lithium to manufacturing and Enzinc inside battery, you’re talking a 20 X reduction end to end in emissions 20 X. Now, today that’s not monetized. But eventually we’re going to care enough about the quality of our air and the health of our ecosystem, because it’s threatening humanity.

Eventually we’re going to say, holy cow, that’s important. Now the other thing I would suggest is be careful about manufacture… How are you are going to manufacture a million of some of these. Impossible materials. It’s like, oh yeah, all we need is 99.9 0.9, point 9, 9% dry air. So that this thing doesn’t burst into flames, you know, let’s talk about solid metal batteries. Oh, they’re so fantastic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, okay. That’s a fire and you look at the, some of the high flyers in this like exotic lithium space. Manufacture those at any scale that we care about? Whoa never been done on earth before…

Mike Burz:
How long did it take for thin film solar to get put in place?

Jon Bonanno:

And then die.

SolarAcademy:

Yeah, exactly good comparison.

Mike Burz:

So I just, I just, yeah, I just think that the, the manufacturing challenges that people are going to have around some of the solid state batteries and stuff are going to be some of the same challenges that thin-film solar faced.

Jon Bonanno:

Well, listen, I think that that taking the systems approach and weeding through the.

Let’s not say deceptive because that would imply some things that we don’t want to say, but people like to be very selective about the information they talk about for their solution. I think that that bringing systems level honesty to the energy storage conversation is critical. To us actually solving this challenge, not just like making a good little company that pops in, then everyone goes eee and we SPAC it and put the risk on the public. And yada, yada, like if we are genuinely interested in deep penetration of solar and wind and electrifying all of our mobility in our homes, we must have superior energy storage that actually works and performs the way we hope it will. That means a system approach is the only way.

SolarAcademy:

Makes sense.