Zinc Air Inc Profiled in Bloomberg Business Week

Zinc Air Inc profiled in Bloomberg Business Week

Zinc Air, Inc. focuses on the development of sustainable energy storage solutions for transportation and smart grid applications. It has rights for the zinc-air fuel cell, a mechanically rechargeable zinc-air fuel cell for remote power and transportation applications. The company has a strategic partnership with Juhl Wind Inc. Zinc Air, Inc. was founded in 2009 and is based in Columbia Falls, Montana.

Zinc Air Inc is getting more attention as information about their revolutionary Zinc Air renewable energy storage grid is being released.

5314-A US Highway 2 West
Columbia Falls, MT 59912

United States

Founded in 2009

 

Phone:406-755-9462

Fax:406-892-9999

www.zincairinc.com

Zinc Air Inc Producing Grid Storage System

Storage is an invaluable human ability. We store food in places where it won’t rot. We store cherished personal mementos. We store information, in far-reaching digital formats and home file cabinets. And we store energy when we can.

But David Wilkins says, for all our strengths in storing life’s necessities, we are sorely lacking in our ability to store one of our most fundamental forms of energy – electricity – on a large scale. His business, Zinc Air Inc., exists to address that void.

Zinc Air, headquartered in a building on U.S. Highway 2 near Columbia Falls, has brought together an accomplished team of scientists and businessmen who boast the types of resumes that let you know they are serious about what they do.

Together, they are preparing to introduce to the market a grid storage system – a battery – that uses flow battery technology and is capable of storing large amounts of electricity with cost-effective efficiency.

 Zinc Air, a private investor-funded enterprise, currently has 14 full-time employees, not including subcontractors, but both Wilkins and Hayes say that number will grow substantially. Hayes said his company has “a strong bias toward Montana” and would like to keep operations here, noting that “the state government is aware, very aware, of our desires and has been helpful.”

 For more information, go to http://zincairinc.com.

Zinc Air Inc Working with Energy Pioneer Jigar Shah

Jigar Shah pioneered a financing model that's contributed to a recent boom in solar-panel installation. He's now looking to do the same for other clean energy technologies.

In 2003, Shah founded SunEdison, a company that developed a way to build corporate and government solar installations by securing agreements to purchase the resulting electricity. It was acquired for $200 million in 2009. Now he's becoming a partner in a new clean-tech fund, Inerjys, which is raising $1 billion to tackle what Shah views as the biggest obstacle to reducing carbon emissions and fossil fuel consumption. He argues that the choke point is not in developing new breakthrough technologies, as some investors believe. Rather, he says, it's in finding "breakthrough deployment" models that would move technologies into widespread commercial use.

Shah says the traditional venture capital model has forced the founders of clean-tech companies to relinquish too much equity in hopes of scaling up and commercializing their breakthroughs. He says that has been a bad situation for all involved: founders become less motivated as their ownership is reduced, and yet this model hasn't given many companies enough capital to make significant progress

At Inerjys, Shah wants to turn his attention to "underappreciated technologies" like Rentricity's. In his most recent position as CEO of Richard Branson's nonprofit climate-change initiative the Carbon War Room, he says, he unearthed hundreds of technologies in more than a dozen sectors that could return their initial investments within two years.

Another example Shah cites is Zinc Air, a Montana-based startup developing a grid-storage battery based on an established chemistry that could be profitable in some regions today. Zinc Air vice president Craig Wilkins says the company is avoiding federal government grants and loan guarantees and plans to market its technology to stand on its commercial merits. He's optimistic as he seeks investment to build the first commercial projects, but he must overcome the poor reputation that clings to battery companies after previous failures. Like Zammataro at Rentricity, he says new financing models for the energy storage market, such as what Shah did for solar at SunEdison, would be a big innovation for him.

www.ZincAirInc.com

Zinc Air Inc Working for Energy Independence Goals

The following is an excerpt from an article posted by  James Greenberger:

"In his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, Mitt Romney referred to his plan for the United States to achieve energy independence by 2020.  That plan is explained in a little more detail in a document entitled “A Romney Plan for A Stronger Middle Class: Energy Independence”, which was released earlier this week by the Romney-Ryan campaign.

Whether it is realistic to assume that energy independence can be achieved by 2020 is beyond the scope of this column.  Nevertheless, the Romney-Ryan plan makes for an interesting read.  While the plan proposes to support a wide range of energy production—petroleum, gas, coal, and even renewables—its promise of energy independence centers on the purported existence of large quantities of economically recoverable domestic petroleum and the assumption that a lot more economically recoverable domestic petroleum will soon be discovered.

Energy independence is a laudable goal, even if based on large increases in domestic petroleum production.  Although its allegedly favorable impact on gasoline prices is oversold, increasing the domestic production of liquid hydrocarbons would make U.S. energy supplies more secure, improve our balance of trade, and create significant additional domestic employment.

 Electricity storage technology, deployed in automotive and grid-supporting applications, is certainly part of the long term solution.  Funding the necessary development and deployment of that technology during a period of relative petroleum abundance will be difficult for the private sector to do alone.  We should watch with interest what the two campaigns have to say about this issue in the weeks ahead and not allow the country to be lulled into complacency by promises from either campaign of a short term fix."

Zinc Air Inc. is a company working on solutions for renewable energy storage. Zinc Air understands the technologies and the needs and they have the expertise behind their innovations. For more information, visit www.ZincAirInc.com.