Back in April of last year, Portland-based Skip Tech announced that the Puyallup Tribe had become the lead investor in their drive to capture the fast developing North American green-energy storage market. While the push toward green energy solutions like solar power and wind farming has only picked up steam in recent decades, long-standing problems still remain. Notably in the areas of power storage, where traditional battery types provide minimal storage durations, or a lack of flexibility in responding to sudden increases in power demand.
These solutions often also rely on extensive mining operations to produce the necessary materials for battery manufacture. In an ever more crucial push toward zero-emission, environmentally friendly energy solutions, it’s increasingly clear that electricity storage is an industry in major need of technological innovation.
In recent years, one of the most hopeful avenues for that innovation has come in the form of hydrogen-bromine batteries. It’s not the hydrogen fuel cell from the 90s Keanu Reeves thriller Chain Reaction, but these batteries could present a serious development in global infrastructure as a method of storing large amounts of electrical power in a highly stable, rechargeable system with a lifespan of up to 20-years.
Because of the delicate nature of the hydrogen-bromine balance, the batteries wouldn’t necessarily be all that well suited to automobile manufacture, but because they allow for quick, cost effective power access using widely available resources, they may be a perfect solution for stabilizing power grids for use with green energy infrastructure like solar and wind that would otherwise not be able to provide continuous electricity.
Alongside the Dutch company Elestor, Skip Tech is one of a very few global enterprises pioneering the necessary innovation to produce these batteries on a large scale. As part of the Tribe’s investment, Skip Tech batteries are set to be manufactured at the newly constructed Puyallup Tribal Enterprises (PTE) warehouse, with a goal toward commercial production by 2030.
Of course, hydrogen-bromine batteries are hardly the first type of storage technology developed with the aim of making green energy a more stable, functional part of civic infrastructure. But these batteries have another core advantage over their rivals: price.
A 2020 independent “techno-economic analysis” of hydrogen-bromine battery systems found that, assuming reasonable industry innovation and mass production price reductions, manufacture and maintenance of these batteries could produce power at equal or lower rates to traditional fossil fuel electricity production.
That kind of math could be a major game changer for green energy, as it attacks one of the core criticisms of the industry and one of the most common reasons for pushback against green energy innovation. If coal is cheaper than solar, people are going to keep burning coal.
If those projections remain on track, the Puyallup Tribe’s investment could make them a key partner in the future of green energy infrastructure in North America.
