US’ Georgia Tech, Stryten Energy tap lead battery innovation

US university the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) and energy storage manufacturer Stryten Energy are giving new life to a more than 160-year-old technology: lead batteries.  

A new lead BESS, unveiled last week, now sits on Georgia Tech’s Atlanta campus and will serve as an experimentation site for advanced research on medium-duration energy storage solutions and applications.  

Designed to round out Georgia Tech’s clean energy offering – along with a previously-installed solar array and a new electric vehicle (EV) charging testbed – the lead BESS will enable bi-directional EV charging and load shifting of peak solar power generation.  

The system will provide backup power and support the school’s microgrid and grid-interactive efficient buildings program. In doing so, the project creates a real-time, real-world testbed for understanding how lead batteries perform in advanced energy applications, particularly in institutional environments. 

While lithium-ion batteries continue to dominate the energy storage industry, a renewed focus on lead batteries for stationary storage reflects how the landscape is rapidly diversifying and growing more saturated with novel and legacy chemistries.  

Lead batteries offer several advantages over lithium-ion devices, including a proven safety record, recyclability, and domestic availability of materials.  

“At comparable costs of deployment, lead is ideal for smaller, behind-the-meter [customer-side] applications,” Scott Childers, vice president of essential power at Stryten Energy, told ESS News. As the US policy environment grows increasingly focused on building secure supply chains, lead batteries are growing more appealing.  

“The lead systems are 100% domestically built and Stryten has institutionalized a 98%-plus closed-loop recycling behavior,” added Childers. 

Georgia Tech’s role will go beyond hosting the installation. Researchers from the university’s Carbon Neutral Energy Solutions Laboratory and the Strategic Energy Institute (SEI) will collect and analyze data on system performance, lifecycle impact, and grid interaction.  

“On the research side, the BESS will complement related in-house microgrid and distributed-energy research aimed at identifying quantifying benefits,” said Richard Simmons, director of research and studies at the SEI, adding that the system is also set to help optimize control strategies.  

“On the education side,” Simmons said, “Our plan is to integrate BESS modeling and experiments into undergraduate and graduate-level courses in energy systems and sustainability.”  

Already, he explained, researchers have developed a digital twin model of the battery system so students can simulate the operational and economic performance of various battery profiles and see how they interact with locally generated rooftop solar energy and real-time electricity prices. 

For Stryten Energy, the project will serve as an opportunity to validate the capability of its technology in a live operational setting while contributing to long-term research that could inform the next generation of batteries.  

“One of our core goals of this work is to drive commercial adoption,” said Childers, adding the data coming out of the collaboration will help fuel more innovation in the space. “Having a well-established and trusted third party like [Georgia Tech] validates how to use this equipment in real-world applications … and that will drive the confidence for businesses and investors to sign up for these distributed energy resources,” he added.