Offgrid Energy Labs, an India-origin deep-tech energy storage company, today announced a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Keele University to deploy its patented ZincGel long-duration energy storage (LDES) technology on the University’s campus in the UK. The partnership will see ZincGel batteries, manufactured at Offgrid’s recently established facility in Hook, Hampshire, deployed in a pilot project at Keele’s Low Carbon Energy Generation Park.
The project marks a significant step in the international commercialisation of energy storage technology developed in India, with the pilot bringing together Indian deep-tech innovation, UK manufacturing and academic research to demonstrate the potential of non-lithium long-duration storage in a live renewable energy environment. It will be the UK’s first zinc-LDES project using a battery manufactured entirely in the UK.
This partnership comes at a time of acute need for this technology in the UK, with Government paying £1.46 billion to curtail around 10 TWh of surplus wind generation in 2025 (up 22% year on year), a cost industry forecasters expect could climb towards £8 billion a year by 2030 in the absence of large-scale, long-duration storage to capture that energy. Keele’s Low Carbon Energy Generation Park, which includes two wind turbines and supplies up to 50% of the campus’s electricity, is therefore well placed to benefit from ZincGel LDES technology.
Under the agreement, the two parties intend to deploy a pilot ZincGel® battery system at Keele’s campus in a fully islanded configuration. The pilot will assess how the technology could capture and store approximately 1 MWh of surplus renewable energy each month, while validating its safety, depth of discharge and round-trip performance under real operating conditions. It will also model performance against seasonal variations in Keele’s renewable generation and demonstrate how ZincGel could help manage curtailment more widely.
The findings will provide the technical evidence needed to develop a proposal for a larger, multi-MWh ZincGel deployment at Keele, designed to absorb excess and otherwise curtailed generation across the campus.
ZincGel was developed by Offgrid Energy Labs in India and is based on proprietary zinc-bromine chemistry designed specifically for long-duration stationary energy storage. The technology is designed for a 6-to-16-hour discharge window, enabling renewable energy generated during periods of surplus to be stored and shifted to periods of higher demand.
The technology uses zinc and bromine rather than lithium, cobalt, nickel or rare earths, and is designed to be non-flammable, supporting applications where safety, deep discharge and long-duration performance are critical. Offgrid is developing the technology for applications including renewable energy integration, industrial energy resilience, microgrids and grid-scale storage.
Baroness Luciana Berger, Chair of the Energy Storage Association, said: “It’s great to see Keele University and Offgrid Energy Labs join forces, brought together through shared membership of the Energy Storage Association and the LDES working group, to deploy ZincGel batteries on campus. Offgrid’s technology will derisk the battery supply chain by reducing our dependence on imports, while helping to cut curtailment costs for Keele’s Low Carbon Energy Generation Park. This is what great collaboration looks like.”
Tejas Kusurkar, Co-Founder of Offgrid Energy Labs, said: “India has built a strong foundation in deep-tech innovation, and the next opportunity is to take technologies developed here into global markets. Our partnership with Keele University is an important step in that journey. It brings together India-origin technology, UK manufacturing and a real-world renewable energy environment to demonstrate how ZincGel® can address the growing need for safe, long-duration storage. As India and other markets accelerate renewable energy deployment, we believe technologies developed from abundant materials and designed for long-duration applications can play an important role in building more resilient energy systems.”
Prof Raphael Hirschi, Director of the Digital Society Institute, said: “It is exciting to start working with Offgrid Energy Labs to address the challenges of renewable energy intermittency and long-duration energy storage. In the short term, we will validate the technology that Zinc-Bromine batteries offer to provide an important alternative to lithium-based technology for energy storage on the timescale of one day. In the longer term, we will explore storage on the timescales of a day as well as a full year.”
