A startup developing long-duration batteries is teaming up with a Pacific Northwest tribe to build innovative energy storage devices.
Puyallup Tribal Enterprises has signed an exclusive manufacturing deal with Portland, Ore.-based Skip Technology, and is the lead investor in a $1.3 million round that the startup recently closed.
The tribe, located south of Seattle, said it was eager to diversify its economic base beyond casinos and Skip Tech needed a manufacturer. But the partnership was a fit on an important, deeper level as well, according to leaders from each group.
“Our culture and values align,” said Matt Wadhwani, CEO of Puyallup Tribal Enterprises. “What they’re trying to do is make a difference, make a global impact. For the tribe, if there’s an opportunity where you can commit to something that’s environmentally friendly, has a global impact, is sustainable — and have the opportunity to make some money — it’s a win. And not just make money, but provide jobs to tribal members.”
The Skip Tech founders launched their company to answer an important question in the transition to renewable, intermittent power sources such as solar and wind: How do you make electricity at noon, and then use it at eight o’clock at night when the sun’s down?
Their answer? Hydrogen bromine flow batteries.
Skip Tech’s batteries can hold the extra power produced by clean energy sources and release it as needed over 10 or 12 hours — a much longer time than a comparable lithium battery.
The technology includes tanks that hold the chemicals used to fuel the batteries, and cells that act as the battery’s engine where the energy producing chemical reactions take place. Skip Tech’s design uses a 20-foot-long shipping container to house each battery, which should be able to power 35 homes.
Co-founders Ben Brown and Brennan Gantner hope to deploy the batteries to rural communities and businesses that need reliable backup for grid outages and to complement renewable power.
Other selling points for using bromine and hydrogen as battery chemicals: they’re cheaper and easier to come by than technologies that use rare elements, and they don’t have the flammability risks associated with lithium batteries.
Puyallup Tribal Enterprises will build the batteries, initially starting with all of the components except the cells. The organization already has experience modifying shipping containers and will do that work at a facility it operates near the Tacoma waterfront.
The tribal company is building a second, 140,000-square-foot facility in Fife for doing the other battery manufacturing work. The shell of the site should be completed in July, and will also house three additional manufacturing ventures the tribe is launching. Wadhwani said they’re looking into workforce training to prep tribal members for the new roles.
“We’ve been a gaming tribe for most of the last 20 years. So members, the tribal council, the board, they’re really excited about this,” said Wadhwani, who is also a tribal member and chief financial officer of the Puyallup Tribe of Indians.
“It is a calculated risk,” he added. “We’re not going to lie about that. But the upside, the revenue and the global impact, is too good to pass up on.”
In addition to the funding from the tribe, Skip Tech landed a $750,000 National Science Foundation Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) Phase 1 grant in 2019, and a $1 million SBIR Phase 2 grant last year. The nine-person company, which launched in 2018, has also received funding from Elevate Capital and the Bend Venture Conference.
Brown and Gantner both hold doctorate degrees in astrophysics, meeting as graduate students at the University of Colorado. Brown is now an associate professor at the same university and Gantner previously co-founded a wind-power company.
When they embarked on their entrepreneurial journey, the two were drawn to hydrogen bromide batteries in part because the lithium field was already well advanced and they were interested in exploring a newer technology. They were able to take relevant battery research published from MIT in 2013 and apply their knowledge, including Brown’s expertise in fluid dynamics.
Hydrogen bromine batteries were a hot technology in the 1980s, Brown said, but the operation requires strong acids that devour most materials. Skip Tech is able to take newer advanced plastics and use 3D printing to build their devices. Their special innovation is in the design, in which they’ve created a liquid membrane for the battery cell instead of a plastic one that is too easily dissolved.
The Skip Tech team knows of one other hydrogen bromine flow battery business currently operating, which is a Dutch company called Elestor that launched a decade ago and has raised $30.5 million.
A short distance from Skip Tech is ESS, another flow battery startup that uses iron in its long-duration devices. The Oregon company is publicly traded and has deals with multiple U.S. utilities and business partnerships abroad. It was recently named one of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies.
This fall Skip Tech is planning a “held-together-with-duct-tape alpha test” of its technology with a rural industrial business. The team feels a sense of urgency and is aiming for a pilot test of a commercial prototype in 2025.
“We need energy storage at grid scale. We need cities powered by batteries,” Brown said. “Getting directly there from a thing in the laboratory and in a small company, that’s very hard. We need to build our way up and learn what’s working and not working and refine designs. We need to get solutions in people’s hands right away.”
