Swedish startup focuses on zinc-ion batteries, opening world’s first megafactory

Swedish startup Enerpoly has opened the world’s first zinc-ion battery megafactory. Its vision is to scale a better alternative to lithium-ion batteries to store renewable energy for longer periods of time.

The Enerpoly Production Innovation Center (EPIC) facility is located north of Stockholm. Start-up has already begun, and the plant is set to produce its first zinc-ion batteries next year. The company aims to reach a maximum production capacity of 100 MWh by 2026—enough energy to power about 20,000 homes.

In 2018, Dr. Mylad Chamoun made a breakthrough in zinc-ion battery chemistry while pursuing a PhD at Stockholm University. Later that year, he teamed up with his former colleague, Dr. Samir Nameer, and the duo founded Enerpoly. The partners saw a huge gap in the market where lithium-ion batteries were not competitive—offering 2 to 10 hours of energy storage. They believed zinc-ion batteries could fill that gap.

Making Zinc Ion Batteries Work

The use of zinc in batteries is nothing new. The AA batteries that power your most valuable (read: junk) toys and gadgets are made from zinc and manganese oxide. This chemistry has made companies like Energizer and Duracell a ton of money.

But zinc-ion batteries have historically been, for lack of a better word, lousy at charging. That’s because the zinc-ion chemistry is plagued by dendrites—crystals that cause short circuits. They also lose capacity quickly.

“Enerpoly has innovated the entire zinc-ion battery system—including the anode, cathode, electrolyte, and separator design—to address these inherent issues,” Eloisa da Castro, the company’s CEO and an MIT-educated aerospace engineer, told TNW.

Enerpoly uses zinc metal as the battery anode, manganese dioxide as the cathode, and a water-based electrolyte to transfer charged particles between the two sides.

Unlike lithium, zinc is widely available worldwide. What’s more, Sweden is home to Europe’s largest zinc reserves—about 2% of the world’s total. Enerpoly hopes to create a fully European supply chain for its batteries, making the continent a “zinc ion powerhouse.”

Zinc ion for energy storage

Unlike lithium-ion battery manufacturers, Enerpoly is targeting the energy storage market – not electric vehicles and smartphones. Example applications include renewable energy storage, load shifting on the grid and increasing energy resilience – in the range of 2-10 hours of storage.

The batteries are modular—multiple packs can be placed in parallel to create larger systems. The company says the packs are nontoxic, nonflammable, and nonexplosive.

Because the materials they use are so much more common, Enerpoly believes it can be cost-competitive with countless other short- and medium-term energy storage technologies in development. These include lithium-ion batteries, thermal heat storage devices, liquid air batteries, iron flow batteries, gravity batteries, and even this CO2 dome.

And investors seem to agree. The company has raised almost 15 million euros to date. More than 8 million euros of that amount came from the Swedish Energy Agency for the construction of the EPIC plant.

CEO Da Castro told TNW that the company also plans to close a Series A round this year as it looks to scale up to a 100 MWh target by 2026. In July, Enerpoly acquired state-of-the-art dry-electrode manufacturing equipment from bankrupt startup Nilar, which it will use in its new factory. The startup plans its first gigafactory after 2026.