In Batteries, Bigger Can Be Better, This Dutch Startup Says
Zenon Energy’s heavier cells aren’t suited for cars, but they’re great for industrial storage and price arbitrage that could bring electricity bills down.
The Zenon battery system on a truck.
Source: Zenon
On a sunny December morning near the Port of Amsterdam, a hydraulic lift grabs a 40-foot shipping container, gingerly rotates it in midair and plunks it down near a 20-foot electric crane. Inside the box is a 3.75-ton battery that can put out enough electricity to power about a dozen homes—or, in this case, most of what’s needed for the crane, a conveyor belt that carries the sand it scoops up to an adjacent concrete factory and the mixing equipment inside. “If we don’t have electricity, we don’t produce,” says Jeroen Droog, chief executive officer of Albeton Algemene Betonmaatschappij BV, the owner of the plant.
Albeton, the Netherlands’ biggest concrete maker, suffers from the electricity shortages that plague many businesses in the country. In Albeton’s part of town, the grid is maxed out. So the company contacted Dutch startup Zenon Energy Europe BV to make a battery system that can double in size as Albeton’s trucks transition to electric in anticipation of a ban on diesel Amsterdam plans to implement from 2030.