GST has taken a top down approach in its development of a utility scale battery.  Instead of working up from an efficient chemical couple or from an existing design template, we instead started with the precept that a battery must cost no more than a peaking gas turbine as that is the first competitor of any utility scale battery technology.  Turbines use natural gas and have no ability to add value to existing generating assets by shifting output, thus we set an adjusted price goal of $1M per MW of power with adequate energy storage. 

With such an aggressive cost goal, we evaluated what components and materials we simply could not afford.  We first focused on the membrane, electrodes, and storage media as these are the primary cost drivers.  Our first patent reduced these costs significantly.  In addition to component cost savings, our design also prevented many maintenance and durability issues – thus reducing operating cost and extending the life cycle of our battery.  To save on volume of energy storage media, as well as size and weight of the battery, we invented and are patenting our air cathode design that is fully rechargeable and highly durable.  Our unique design also improves heat management and flexibility of the system for a wide range of applications.

Our team considered factors that may limit widespread future adoption such as environmental safety and global supply of materials.  We understood that toxic chemicals and vapors as well as molten materials are likely to cause permitting and other limiting issues especially with urban or suburban installations.  We chose materials that would not have supply limitations in volume or geography in the event that industry demand grew to thousands of megawatts.  We chose zinc as an element that is safe and environmentally benign, available in scale from diverse regions, inexpensive – and of course energy-dense.

Finally, given the potential future of power storage, we wanted to ensure that our design was amenable to mass production so that we could scale up manufacturing quickly with limited lead time or capital investment.  We designed the GST zinc/air battery such that all of our components are available from existing sources in the US and abroad with minor modification.

The result of our development process is a battery that has broken cost barriers, is power and energy-dense, offers simple and low cost operation, has flexibility of use and a wider range of discharge capability, is space efficient, with high operating efficiency and depth of discharge, and has industry leading cycle life.