By Josh Perry, Editor
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Innolith AG, an energy technology company based in Basel, Switzerland and with research facilities in Bruchsal, Germany, has announced the commercialization of its novel inorganic electrolyte technology that it promises will enhance the lifetime of batteries being used for grid-level storage.

Innolith AG has announced a new battery for the power grid with an inorganic electrolyte. (Wikimedia Commons)

According to a press release from Innolith, the inorganic electrolyte technology is non-flammable, unlike lithium-ion batteries, and delivers high power over 50,000 charge and discharge cycles.

“This means that the batteries provide a fraction of the cost-per-cycle compared to conventional Li-ion grid batteries while delivering the high power, high cycle grid-regulation services,” the release explained.

Alan Greenshields, Board Chairman of Innolith AG, added, “What the world needs is a safe battery that can operate over tens of thousands of cycles and still deliver the power needed. Innolith has created such a battery, which has been tested by third party labs and proven commercially in a demanding application.”

Battery production is expected to begin in 2019 and volume production in 2020.

“The demand for a high power, high durability and safe battery is not in doubt,” said Sergey Buchin, CEO of Innolith AG. “Our task is to take the technology into large-scale production and we are at an advanced stage in achieving this. We are on track to procure mass production of Innolith’s high power battery by 2020. Beyond this, our team of scientists is working on new generations of inorganic batteries that promise to deliver substantial gains in performance.”

A report from PV Magazine outlined some of the details about this new battery technology, including the fact that grid-scale batteries are expected to go through two charging cycles per day and that the 50,000-cycle lifetime of Innolith batteries is 10 times greater than for traditional batteries. The Innolith batteries have a lifetime of approximately 15 years.