WattJoule Corporation, a developer of next-generation flow battery energy storage systems, has entered into an exclusive, worldwide intellectual property licensing agreement with the University of Tennessee Research Foundation.
This agreement allows the full commercialisation of patent pending, breakthrough energy storage technology developed over the last three years and funded by the US Department of Energy’s Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability, under the programme leadership of Dr Imre Gyuk; the Office of Naval Research; and the National Science Foundation. The latter two funding sources have focused on various fundamental aspects of the technology. The DOE funding, in particular, has focused on more applied development which has led to significant performance improvements. “The aim of our research is to provide industry with proven, cost-effective new technology,” said Dr Gyuk. “We are setting the stage for widespread deployment of energy storage.”
One of the major barriers preventing the widespread adoption of large-scale energy storage has been cost. WattJoule is engineering a new product platform based on the flow battery concept where electricity is stored in a liquid. WattJoule’s liquid is mostly water and is inexpensive to make in large quantities. Flow battery systems today suffer from a number of limitations that have been hard to solve until several recent breakthroughs in the field. WattJoule is both licensing and developing a portfolio of critical patent-pending technology that, in combination, will dramatically lower energy storage cost to $150 per kilowatt hour in its first generation product.
Greg Cipriano, VP business development and founder of WattJoule, said: “The heart of our new redox flow battery is a greatly improved electrochemical cell, where we can produce 10 times more power, for the same volume, over commercial flow battery systems. This high-power operation significantly reduces the amount of expensive material needed and this dramatically reduces cost. It also enables greater dynamic power range, which opens up a large spectrum of applications for one product platform that no other company can provide.”