Episode 1.02 On Battery Technology Innovation with Eloisa de Castro

Power Flow

In this episode, we get nerdy about batteries and how battery technology has the power to drive the energy transition.

Energy storage is a crucial piece of the clean energy future. It mitigates the intermittency of nondispatchable renewable generation like solar or wind and allows us to shift energy to when it is truly needed while also providing grid stability.

Lithium-based batteries are currently the front-running energy storage candidate due to their wide use in personal electronics over the past 25 years, their high energy density, and high cycle lifetimes. But lithium-based batteries are not without challenges - from accessibility of materials to fire hazards during operation to a lack of recyclability, there are plenty of opportunities to challenge lithium's dominance as a battery chemistry.
Eloisa de Castro and her company, Enerpoly, are looking to do just that with humble zinc-manganese -- the same type of chemistry as your standard alkaline battery. They are looking to make this workhorse both rechargeable and scalable so they can beat lithium in material availability, manufacturability, safety, recyclability, and yes, affordability.

Quotables:

“The innovation that needs to happen in the energy industry is around the integration of technology more than around the technology itself.”
-Eloisa de Castro and Amy Simpkins

“One of the challenges around trying to find solutions in the energy industry is that we, as humans, have this common desire to simplify problems or solutions into a single metric that we have to reference.

But, when you're solving an integrated engineering problem, there are a lot of different factors that you can play with. So you have to choose the ones that are the most important to you.”

-Eloisa de Castro

This Week’s Guest

Eloisa de Castro is CEO of Enerpoly, the Swedish zinc-ion battery technology company that is generating buzz in Europe's energy industry and has been selected as one of 2021's Top 5 Battery Tech Challengers by the Energy Tech Summit.

Eloisa comes with a wealth of experience in technology leadership, having spent over 10 years in engineering and operations in the energy and aerospace industries. Prior to Enerpoly, she served as Director of Market Operations and Program Management at Modern Energy. Eloisa earned her bachelors in Mechanical Engineering from MIT and her MBA from INSEAD in France.
Resources:

Connect with Eloisa de Castro on LinkedIn.

Follow Enerpoly on LinkedIn and check out their website.

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Thank you for listening. See you at the whiteboard!