Batteries, the Italian challenge for storage: Ges launches the hydrogen and manganese system
Long-life storage will be essential for the energy transition to renewables, which are inherently intermittent and need batteries to cushion surges and stabilise the grid. Green Energy Storage proposes precisely this, with its hydrogen battery protected by 7 patents, which it presented today at its Rovereto headquarters, inside Progetto Manifattura, Trentino Sviluppo's green hub, in the presence of institutions, industrial and scientific partners.
"We will be the European champions of this technology," announced president and founder Salvatore Pinto, illustrating Ges's hydrogen battery, based on a liquid manganese electrolyte, with which it has received Ipcei (Important Projects of Common European Interest) funding of 61.5 million euros in 2022 and with which it has created an initial 1 kilowatt prototype, widely scalable to industrial production, which is planned for the end of this year. Pinto also announced the opening of Ges' first office abroad, in Bilbao, where there is already a small cluster of collaborators who are preparing the industrial phase of the project, targeting the Spanish market, after last year's experience of a blackout due precisely to the shortage of long-term storage in high-voltage grids, which are overloaded with renewable energy.
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'It's been 10 years of steady growth, working with dozens of top researchers who have returned to Italy and international partners who have supported us, but now we have fine-tuned the technology and can demonstrate it with a robust 2.5 million test bench infrastructure, enviable in Europe, to test our batteries and take them rapidly to industrial level,' explains CEO Matteo Mazzotta, who also highlights the extensive collaborations at European level, with Fraunhofer for membranes, De Nora for electrodes and Rina for hydrogen.
Ges' technology also has advantages due to the strategic dimension of a manganese-based, all-European supply chain, whereas the lithium batteries that dominate the market today are completely dependent on Chinese production. "An increasingly conflictual global scenario increases the opportunities for new technologies such as ours, based on a raw material, manganese, which is the twelfth most widespread element on the earth's crust and has a production chain in Italy and Europe, putting us at an advantage in a post-globalisation world,' Mazzotta notes.
"Looking ahead, our redox flow battery is easily scalable to very high power and seasonal storage durations, which are essential for Long-Duration Energy Storage (Ldes), which must be able to store energy not only for many hours, but for days weeks or even months, and release it when needed, overcoming the structural limitations of lithium-ion batteries, which are mainly designed for short-term applications,' explains Ilaria Pucher, head of research at Ges, who returned to Italy in 2017 after a university career in the US.
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