The Energy Department Goes to New York Energy Week

By vote, the most popular proposal provided a way to make energy data more useful to innovators by cleaning, prioritizing and linking data sets. Members from the data jam will continue working on the idea to try and implement it for the upcoming datapalooza. | Photo courtesy of the Energy Department.

There was lots of excitement and energy at the New York Data Jam this week. Participants brainstormed new ways of addressing national challenges in energy and sustainability. The ideas ranged from implementing policies around publicizing consumer energy data to using the electric vehicle fleet as batteries to store off peek energy and provide it back to the grid when needed. Many new ideas were created and partnerships were formed. | Photo courtesy of the Energy Department.

At a New York Energy Week event, Urban Electric Power and the City University of New York (CUNY) Energy Institute unveiled part of a 200 kWh installation of its zinc-nickel oxide battery at the City College of New York’s Steinman Hall. The installation currently includes 224 small 140 amp-hour batteries but will grow to 896 batteries when finished. The batteries will allow the building to reduce its peak electricity demand by 10 percent, saving the college up to $5,000 per month in the summer. | Photo courtesy of the Energy Department.

Developed by the CUNY Energy Institute and commercialized by Urban Electric Power, the zinc-nickel oxide batteries use flow-assisted chemistry to achieve their long life cycle. A motor at the bottom of the battery helps circulate the electrolyte, which inhibits the formation of zinc deposits known as dendrites, enabling the battery to recharge for thousands of cycles. | Photo courtesy of the Energy Department.

Pictured here is an early version of the CUNY Energy Institute’s zinc-nickel oxide flow-assisted battery. At a size of 35 watt hours, this battery is affectionately called the workhorse battery -- researchers at the CUNY Energy Institute used this battery to solve all the challenges in developing the technology. | Photo courtesy of the Energy Department.

Josh Gallaway, a research scientist at the CUNY Energy Institute, holds a zinc-manganese dioxide battery that was developed with funding from ARPA-E. At half the weight and five times the life of a lead acid battery, the zinc-manganese dioxide battery is a larger, rechargeable version of the batteries used to power flashlights and toys. | Photo courtesy of the Energy Department.

Urban Electric Power has combined nine small zinc-manganese dioxide cells to create a start-stop battery -- a safer and more efficient alternative to lead acid batteries. The CUNY Electric Institute continues to work on the zinc-manganese dioxide technology and is exploring ways to scale it up for large-scale grid energy storage. Once fully scaled up, the zinc-manganese dioxide will be even more cost-effective than the zinc-nickel oxide batteries developed by the CUNY Energy Institute and Urban Electric Power. | Photo courtesy of the Energy Department.