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Uttar Pradesh- Tejas Kusurkar is the co-founder of Offgrid Energy Labs. For both Tejas & Brindan, green energy has been a lifelong passion. They met at IIT Kanpur while pursuing their PhDs and the idea of Offgrid germinated. They then met with Rishi, who had already spent more than two decades in deep technology companies, and Ankur, who has been working with various Global Energy Conglomerates, and the four of them developed the core value proposition of building batteries with completely new chemistry, materials and design. They had 3 key goals: 1) Build efficient & sustainable battery technology 2) Build batteries with commonly available materials & 3) Bring price points of batteries down leveraging the new chemistry to drive widespread adoption in new applications across stationary & mobility applications.
Tejas & Brindan’s Offgrid is to solve the key problem by balancing performance, ecological sustainability & pricing in the same battery. The current battery landscape has technologies like Lithium Ion that are quite efficient but expensive and Lead Acid, which are low cost but highly inefficient, while both are ecologically unsustainable. Therefore, reducing widespread usage of batteries in renewable energy, utility & mobility applications. Offgrid is attempting to democratize the use of energy across all these applications, which is a key need in the world today.
Offgrid’s unique chemistry, materials, and design plays well to solve this imbalance, as batteries are Zinc based and utilize commonly available materials in India and most importantly are also completely non-toxic and they call it ZincGel® battery. Two large problems staring India in the face are recycling existing batteries, a growing global problem, as well as sourcing of materials for Lithium Ion batteries – both of which are partially offset by Offgrid with local sourcing & production capabilities. Additionally, Efficient and Sustainable Energy Storage Batteries will foster the growth of Renewables by improving stability in the Power supply, which directly help India in achieving its 2030 Climate Action Plan commitments.
Offgrid’s products currently are at the field testing stage, they have successfully built & tested as per global standards, ZincGel batteries in the lab and are in the process of testing prototypes in real-life applications. Post successful pilots, they will be going into certification for commercial production. They said that they have been engaging with global and local energy players and power sector systems integrators to validate our technology of batteries for different applications. Their passion at Offgrid is innovating in energy storage and in that direction, they have already created over 15 IPs and hope to have 23+ IPs by next year.
Energy is an eco-system play and therefore Offgrid has partnered with global and national energy companies to validate, manufacture, and deploy ZincGel® in both stationary and mobile applications.
About ZincGel® battery USPs
Unique & Safe chemistry: They have invented a solventless electrolyte using non-toxic chemicals. The electrolyte is temperature stable and non-flammable, offering resilience and safety for energy storage.
Sustainable materials: They innovated by using completely new and commonly available materials and replaced supply-constrained, as well as high-cost battery materials like lithium, cobalt & vanadium. This makes ZincGel® batteries 100% sustainable and non-toxic thereby simplifying the manufacturing processes and cost substantially.
Energy-efficient manufacturing: Unlike lithium-ion, the ZincGel® battery does not need clean & dry rooms, leading to CAPEX savings of up to 35%. Also, existing lead-acid manufacturers can make ZincGel batteries easily with available equipment.
Scalable design: By virtue of ZincGel’s modular design, they can create customized battery packs for different energy storage applications basis their unique requirements while maintaining the advantages of higher efficiency, lower cost, and sustainability.
To know about the product, get in touch with Tejas Kusurkar at [email protected]
