Zinc is Getting a Second Look as Energy Storage Is Entering a Critical Phase

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For more than a decade, lithium-ion batteries have powered the modern energy economy. From smartphones and laptops to electric vehicles and grid-scale storage, lithium has been the default technology for mobility and instant energy.

That dominance, however, has also created pressure points. Lithium supply chains are increasingly exposed to geopolitical and industrial concentration, particularly in refining and battery materials, where China plays an outsized role. 

As those risks grow, an older element is drawing renewed attention: zinc.

Unlike lithium, zinc is abundant, geographically diversified, and deeply integrated into existing industrial supply chains. It is also one of the earliest materials used in batteries, dating back to the nineteenth century. The constraint was never availability, but performance, cost, and rechargeability.

Those are the problems that Offgrid Energy Labs, which was incubated in IIT-Kanpur, believes it has finally cracked.

Betting on Storage 

The company was incorporated in 2018 and incubated at IIT Kanpur, when energy storage was still peripheral to the clean-energy debate.

“In 2017–18, energy storage wasn’t considered a major opportunity,” says Rishi Srivastava, co-founder of the company. “Electric vehicles hadn’t taken off, and even stationary storage for renewable energy was still niche.”

The conviction came from research rather than market momentum. Two researchers at IIT Kanpur argued early that energy storage would become a critical infrastructure rather than a supporting technology. The founders decided to focus on stationary applications and avoid mobility, where lithium-ion chemistries were already advancing rapidly.

“They convinced me, too. I was completely bowled over by their vision, and we decided to set up a company together,” Srivastava says. 

But Offgrid positioned itself around renewables, industrial backup, microgrids, and long-duration storage, segments where safety, cost, and supply resilience matter as much as energy density.

The founders consciously avoided mobility. Electric vehicles, they felt, were already being aggressively addressed by lithium-ion and other emerging chemistries. 

Why Zinc?

Offgrid’s technology is built on zinc bromine, a battery chemistry that has existed for decades but never reached mass adoption. Historically, zinc bromine systems were complex, expensive to manufacture, and delivered lower efficiency than lithium-ion alternatives, limiting them to niche use cases.

The company’s approach rested on three pillars.

The first was chemistry, improving zinc bromine performance through materials and electrode innovation rather than inventing a new chemistry.

The second was supply resilience. Zinc, bromine, and carbon are commodity materials used in industries such as galvanization, chemicals, plastics, and tires, with production spread across India, Europe, the US, and China. That diversification contrasts with lithium, cobalt, and nickel supply chains, which are more geopolitically exposed.

“Lithium refining and battery materials are heavily concentrated in China,” Srivastava says, arguing that such concentration poses systemic risks as batteries become core infrastructure.

As batteries increasingly underpin economies, from consumer electronics to solar farms, that concentration of control poses systemic risk.

The third pillar was system design. Lithium-ion’s dominance reflects decades of cumulative research and industrial scaling. Offgrid aimed to compress development timelines by rethinking architecture and manufacturability rather than starting from scratch.

What is Zincgel

The result is ZincGel, Offgrid’s core product and intellectual property (IP) platform. The company says it holds more than 50 patents and IP assets globally, all tied to making zinc bromine commercially viable at scale.

Traditional zinc bromine batteries typically operate at around 70-to-75% round-trip efficiency, depending on configuration and auxiliary systems. Offgrid says ZincGel has demonstrated close to 90% energy efficiency in field trials, putting it in the range of lithium-ion systems for stationary storage.

Cost is the second differentiator. ZincGel batteries are primarily composed of zinc, bromine, and carbon. These inputs are not subject to the same supply bottlenecks or price volatility seen in lithium-based systems.

The chemistry itself is not new. The shift lies in making it efficient, safe, and economical enough for large-scale deployment.

From Lab to Factory Floor

Offgrid raised early funding from global angel investors interested in deep science, followed by a pre-Series A round led by Shell Ventures. Shell worked closely with the startup across teams in the US and Europe, validating the technology and running pilots in real-world conditions.

More recently, the company closed a $15 million Series A round with Archean Chemical Industries Ltd., one of the world’s leading bromine suppliers and a publicly listed Indian company. The funding is now being deployed to set up Offgrid’s first manufacturing facility.

Interestingly, the first plant will be built in the UK, not India. The logic is pragmatic: access to advanced manufacturing talent, strong infrastructure, and an ecosystem aligned with global standards. 

The facility will have a capacity of around 10 megawatt-hours, which is small by industry standards, where scale truly begins at the gigawatt level, but this is deliberate. Once manufacturing is validated at this scale, the company plans to build a gigawatt-scale facility in India.

Where does Zincgel Fit

Offgrid is clear-eyed about Zincgel’s role. It is not a universal replacement for lithium, which excels at short-duration, high-power applications, smartphones, laptops, EVs, where weight, size, and rapid discharge matter most.

Zincgel’s strength lies in long-duration, stationary, safety-critical, and cost-sensitive applications.

India’s renewable energy story illustrates this well. The country has become the world’s third-largest solar producer, benefiting from about 300 to 330 sunny days a year across much of the country.

But a generation without storage leads to massive energy wastage. Lithium-based storage has often been too expensive for widespread adoption. Zincgel changes that equation, making solar storage more accessible and commercially viable.

Data centers are another major focus. As AI and cloud infrastructure continue to expand, data centers face an increasingly pressing energy crunch. Efficient, affordable renewable storage could become a critical enabler.

Then there are net-zero-driven enterprises. Across India, manufacturing companies with large facilities are installing rooftop solar panels but struggling with storage. 

In markets like Europe and the US, where electricity prices are extremely high, the incentive is even stronger. Stored renewable energy directly impacts both operating costs and emissions.

Microgrids in regions with unreliable grid access, such as India, Southeast Asia, and Africa, present another opportunity. Here, Zincgel can serve as the backbone of solar- or wind-powered systems, reducing dependence on diesel generators. 

Safety-critical environments may be Zincgel’s most distinctive advantage. In pilots with Shell, Offgrid explored deployments at fuel stations. Lithium-ion batteries, with their risk of fire and thermal runaway, are unlikely to be approved in such settings. 

Zinc bromine systems are aqueous and avoid the thermal runaway risks associated with lithium-ion batteries, making them easier to site in safety-critical environments, subject to regulatory approvals.

An Old Element, a New Role

In many ways, Offgrid Energy Labs’ story is about timing. Zinc was present at the birth of batteries, but it took a century, climate urgency, the scaling up of renewable energy, and geopolitical realities for its moment to return. Zincgel doesn’t aim to dethrone lithium; it aims to stand alongside it, filling the gaps lithium cannot.

As energy storage becomes foundational infrastructure rather than a niche technology, that distinction may matter more than market dominance.