ViZn Energy, Jabil Inala partner to provide storage solutions to African power market

ViZn Energy Systems (ViZn), a provider of zinc and iron chemistry-based flow battery energy storage systems for utilities and microgrids, announced that they will be partnering with Jabil Inala to offer turnkey storage solutions to the African power market.

Africa has 13 percent of the world’s population, but accounts for only four percent of the world’s energy demand, leaving a gap of around 600 million people with no access to electricity according to the International Energy Agency’s Africa Energy Outlook.

“Africa represents an enormous market both in terms of the potential growth for supplying power and the ability to positively impact the lives of millions of people,” said Ron Van Dell, CEO of ViZn Energy. “Since much of the centralized distribution infrastructure does not exist across the continent, it is ripe for the establishment of distributed microgrids to power villages that currently don’t have electricity and also to replace diesel generators at remote mining and agricultural facilities. The non-toxic chemistry used in ViZn’s flow batteries means they can be safely deployed in these areas and without an HVAC system.”

Jabil — the world’s third largest manufacturing services provider — acquired South African energy solutions provider and systems integrator Inala in January of this year as their entry into the African continent. Jabil Inala is an applications engineering EPC that designs, sources, commissions and supports best-of-breed energy solutions. They are currently operating in eleven sub-Saharan countries where traditional grids are either unreliable or uneconomical to develop. Jabil Inala’s turnkey distributed energy solutions encompass generation, storage, efficiency, monitoring, and analytics.

“In the African market, it is critical for a microgrid to have the ability to operate in harsh environments while maintaining industrial power quality,” said Howard Earley, Managing Director at Jabil Inala. “ViZn’s 20-year expected operational lifetime and ability to perform both high power and long duration applications delivers very attractive economics in these demanding applications.”

ViZn’s flow battery technology utilizes a non-toxic, low cost zinc and iron chemistry that aids steady and safe operation. Their systems are capable of performing both high-power (with one of the fastest charge and discharge responses on the market) and long-duration capabilities for the commercial & industrial, microgrid, and utility-scale markets while also offering low O&M, allowing end users to incorporate multiple value streams and realize more favorable payback periods than other energy storage technologies. ViZn is currently building the largest flow battery in North America and is on track to be the largest global producer of flow batteries by the end of the year.