MEDIA RELEASE 13/8/2019
They only made one Charlie Van Dongen; he’s unique, interesting, brilliant and a laugh-a-minute jester in a world of motherboards, whirring machines and high-tech development.
He’s the brains behind the world’s safest battery, the Zenaji Aeon Battery.When he isn’t cracking jokes and threatening to don a yellow suit “because I’m the guy who wants to stand out” Charlie Van Dongen pulls technology apart to re-imagine its potential, its impact, its value – then re-engineers the product in a superior format, just like he did with the Zenaji battery.Here’s how it happened.
Oi: Tell me about the origin of the battery technology.
Charlie: It began many moons ago back in the late 80s. I actually started a company which manufactured and designed DC to AC sine wave inverters but I was way too early. That was in the days where nobody knew about solar power as such, it was only hippies and dropout types who would want to buy solar equipment. Getting into the market was very difficult and I swore off that market for various reasons and diversified. Along the way the whole solar revolution happened and one of our customers at the time came to me identifying that the next big boom was going to be battery and storage technology.
He said “Have a look at this and see if you can find any openings or any areas where we could be different and capture the market”. I examined a whole bunch of different technologies. I looked at rotational storage and looked at pump storage. I looked at various other forms of storage, but came back to batteries in the end because some of the other technologies would take too long to develop or had technical deficiencies or were too dangerous. For example, rotational storage is very good but dangerous and I can see that it would be a $50 million project to try and develop that technology.
And everybody was going down the Lithium ion path. Tesla was just announcing their power wall, and we didn’t want to be “me too”. There was no sense in just throwing our hat into the ring as the market was cluttered with companies telling the same story and managing the same problems.
So I began researching alternatives which led me to believe it might be better to redefine and rethink the conventional solar models. I believed we could create a new unit which had the solar cell, the inverter, charger and the batteries all in the one package, and it could be located on the roof underneath the panels in a very slim flatline form.
So then you can easily “Lego” your solar panels together and forget about it. If you wanted to expand a system you just grab another all-in-one panel connect it to the other panels and you could grow the size of your solar system, both in terms of production and storage.
Oi: Did you pursue this system?
Charlie: We ended up patenting this system and it remains on our “to do list” but the real issue was the temperatures that the battery would be exposed to. You can almost guarantee that on a hot day in Australia, the temperature underneath the solar panel will be at least five degrees hotter than the air temperature. If you targeted 50, 55 and 60 degrees Celsius no battery technology we knew of at the time could handle it. It (the battery) would be dead within a year.
We looked into operating thresholds further, and one of our senior engineers Chris Coller came up with lithium titanate batteries. They can go from minus 50 to plus 60 degrees Celsius. In fact, we know they can go in excess of 60C and essentially not wear out.
The big downside to lithium titanate was cost; titanate was expensive. But they offered an extraordinary cycle life and safety. You can jump on them, shoot them, stab them or slam them into brick walls – they won’t combust. That for us was the lightbulb moment. It was a great alternative to all other battery technology.
So we sat down and did the economics based on an anticipated cell price. To our surprise we found our batteries ended up being about half the cost of normal LIPO batteries over a lifetime of use. So although the initial price would be higher than current offerings the lifetime ownership value was far better than anything else. Coupled with the reliability of the product and its great safety attributes we believed we had a world class solution. So now it became more a marketing challenge to put that as a package to customers.
After concluding a battery could be financially competitive, we set out to design the actual product. We negotiated hard with the actual cell manufacturer and eventually got to a highly competitive price which resulted in the product we have today. This product is safe, efficient, lasts a lifetime and is more than cost competitive over that lifetime. It does cost a little more upfront than cheap alternatives but anybody who really thinks about batteries will rapidly come to the conclusion this is the best battery available today in most situations.
Recent studies have shown that people buy a house and live in that house for an average period of seven years. If you buy a battery that’s a Lithium ion Phosphate battery you can almost bet it’s dead within seven to 10 years. It’s not a re-sellable item, not an asset. You can expect our battery to last well over 20 or even 30 years. This means the cost per warranted hour, is much lower than other competitors like Tesla and LG. That’s the cost every time you charge it up and discharge it for per kilowatt hour over its warranted lifetime. With our battery you will get your money back somewhere between six to 14 years dependent on usage and other factors, but they are warrantied for 20 years. There’s economic benefit there that no other battery offers.
Oi: What’s next?
Charlie: Most of my team’s focus is on large Mega Watt container sized solutions which we intend to start producing later this year.
Some other technologies are looking interesting but too far from commercialization just yet so I’m pretty sure that the lithium titanate solution looks to be the optimal solution for the foreseeable future.
Our philosophy as a company is to follow technical innovations and ensure we are in the right place to take advantage of whichever technology is the best suited at solving a problem. We cannot afford to be philosophically or emotionally tied to any one technology. However, at this point in time, our independent assessment says that Lithium Titanate chemistry is the best solution for the storage of solar and wind power. If you can get over the fact that the initial buy price per kilowatt hour may be a little bit higher but there’s certainly a long-term cost benefit.
Oi: How satisfying is it developing technology like this, and seeing the market respond in the way it has?
Charlie: It’s a funny thing. You can be wrong about a technology and make a huge profit, usually for marketing reasons, and that’s satisfying for some. But for me, it’s nice to be right for the right reasons. Knowing that is enough for me. It’s a good feeling.
We like to stand out from the pack. If I’m a salesman and all the other salesmen are wearing grey suits I’m the guy who’s wearing a yellow suit to stand out from the pack. That’s how we like to be as a company, and it permeates across all the other technologies we work with. We get great satisfaction knowing that it is the best technology and we are serving our clients’ needs in the best possible way. I’m satisfied my engineering team design the best quality products at the best possible price.
These products will serve our clients both now and long into their future.
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