By Bennett Ring, ASM Correspondent
How an Aussie company is looking to jumpstart the battery industry.
In 2018, South Australia’s sustained support for renewable energy has reached widespread attention both nationally and globally, largely in part to the Hornsdale power reserve. Thanks to its partnership with Tesla to provide the world’s largest lithium-ion battery, it’s been credited with stabilising the state’s power grid after several years of less than perfect performance. However, there’s an alternate battery technology being promoted by a prominent South Australian, offering several key benefits compared to lithium-ion.
Redflow is a Brisbane-based company who just happens to have Simon Hackett as one of the key backers. As the founder behind ISP Internode, former NBN board member and the owner of the first Tesla Roadster and Tesla Model S electric vehicles in Australia, Mr Hackett has built an enviable reputation as one of Australia’s most accurate weathervanes when it comes to emerging technologies. Mr Hackett was the CEO of Redflow until September 2017, but is still its largest single investor, as well as a non-executive director and technology evangelist for the company.
Redflow specialises in zinc-bromine flow batteries, and currently sells two different versions, the ZCell for residential use and the ZBM2 for industrial and commercial applications. It’s not the only company in the world to make batteries based on this technology, but its real breakthrough has been in miniaturising the size of these units. We recently interviewed Mr Hackett after a keynote he presented at the Australian Energy Storage Conference, to understand why he’s become such an energetic proponent of this new battery technology…Click here to read full article.
