The partners plan to offer Zinc8's Zinc-Air energy storage system while leveraging the consultancy's pipeline of solar customers, which covers 128 commercial projects with a total of over 8.5 MegaWatt of installed solar capacity.

The partnership's first focus will be on marketing the Zinc8 ESS, a modular energy storage system designed to deliver power in the 20 KiloWatt - 50MW range with a capacity of eight hours of storage duration or higher. The system can be configured to support a wide range of long-duration applications for microgrids and utilities.

"SmartConsult, as an Australian industry leader in renewable energy projects, is the ideal company to work with to deploy Zinc8's long-duration storage system to this rapidly developing market," said Ron Macdonald, president and chief executive of Zinc8 Energy Solutions.

Zinc8's hybrid flow battery uses zinc and air as fuel - power from the grid or renewable source is used to generate zinc particles in the Zinc Regenerator, and the zinc particles are flowed to the Storage Tank and maintained in potassium hydroxide (KOH) electrolyte until required.

The company says the capital cost of an eight-hour Zinc8 storage is about US$300/kWh, falling to US$100/kWh for a 32-hour system and US$60/kWh for 100 hours. By contrast, lithium-ion projects cost about US$300/kWh for any duration over eight hours.