Skip Technology is developing a novel flow battery for storing large quantities of electricity. Initial generations of the battery will fit into a standard cargo container and can be used individually or chained together to fit the customer's storage needs.
One of the biggest benefits of flow batteries is that the total energy stored is decoupled from the voltage and/or power desired. For example, if you want to use lithium-ion batteries chained together to make a large storage battery, you get to choose the voltage of the system OR the total power stored, but not both. This is because each small cell has a set voltage and chaining them together just adds those voltages, one on top of the other.
You want more storage, you get more voltage... Sorry.
Flow batteries, however, can be directly tweaked to the customer's needs. The voltage is determined by the number of charge transfer cells and the energy stored is just a function of how big of liquid storage tanks you wish to include with your battery. Want super high voltages/power? Easy, include a lot of cells and ramp it up! Want more modest voltages with more energy stored. Also easy. Take out some cells and leave more room for bigger liquid tanks and, thus, more energy storage!
We're close. We're really close. Solar and wind energy prices continue to fall and in some places are already displacing carbon fuels on cost alone. However, they still suffer for the supply/demand handicap. In short, when you want to turn on your AC may not be at the same time the wind is blowing or the sun is shining at your local power plant. This can be mitigated by sharing power across continent sized regions, but even that level of smoothing may not be enough at certain times of day or seasons. What we need is a way to store the electricity for a short to medium period of time (a couple of hours to a few days) for when we actually want to use it.
At Skip, we are creating a cargo sized battery that can economically store that electricity until it needs to be used. These batteries will sit between the renewable energy production and the utility grid. As electricity is produced, any extra power that isn't used charges up the batteries. When demand overtakes the current supply, the batteries make up the difference. In short, the peak sun at noon can now power your air conditioning at home at 6 pm.
Skip Technology is developing a new type of flow battery. We've identified a chemistry that can store large quantities of electricity in a cargo sized storage tank. Additionally, we have solved some of the most vexing problems that have held back the use of flow batteries for decades. In combination, Skip's battery will last decades, has inexpensive electrolyte fuels and will require little to no maintenance. This will not only unlock battery usage in a number of new locations, but will fundamentally shift the balance of renewable and carbon energy production.
Skip Technology is proud to announce that it was awarded a Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) in 2019. This grant will kickstart the Skip's product development and help move our battery technology from the lab to putting it in customers hands!
Skip Technology is proud to announce that we were a winner of the Bend Venture Conference 2021 for Impact companies. We look forward to their expertise and guidance as we continue on this journey!
You can watch our pitch at BVC here:
We're proud to have received investments from our partners and being able to tap them for advice and expertise.
Skip Technology was founded in 2018 by Dr. Ben Brown and Dr. Brennan Gantner. They lived together through graduate school and have been friends for almost twenty years. They named their company after the bus line they shared each day on the way to and from the university, the Skip.
Ben has a Physics degree from Harvey Mudd College and a Ph.D. in Astrophysics from Univerity of Colorado Boulder. He is an expert in fluid dynamics, computer modeling and programming. He is routinely awarded time on NASA's biggest supercomputers for his research.
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Brennan has a physics degree from Santa Clara University and a Ph.D. in Astrophysics from the University of Colorado Boulder. He is an expert in prototype designing and building, as well as project management. He designed, built and launched a sounding rocket for his doctoral thesis.
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Maddy has a degree in Mechanical Engineering from University of Portland and a Ph.D. in Material Science from Montana State. She is an expert in fuel cells, corrision studies and material design.
LinkedInLieko is a renewable energy expert with over 10 years experience at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, CO. She is focused on developing testing and proving grounds for innovative automated home energy management systems and control strategies for cost-effective systems that integrate smoothly with home area networks and smart grids.
LinkedInTim has extensive experience in the power and renewable energy industries in Africa, Europe, India, the USA and China. Tim was president of Prudent Energy and CEO of VRB Power Systems, which commercialized the vanadium flow battery energy storage technology. He has served on the boards of several public companies and holds a Master of Science in Engineering. He is a professional engineer and has 65 patents related to smart grids and energy storage.
LinkedInBartlett is an attorney and businessman with over twenty years of experience across a broad range of academic research, complex litigation, mediation, transactional and contract work focused on business outcomes.
LinkedInLaura served as a senior executive in marketing, sales and business development for both startups and Fortune 500 companies. She has an MBA and BS in chemical engineering and has worked in a broad array of technology-based markets.
LinkedInDr. Michael is a professor of Chemistry at CU-Boulder and has his own startup that is developing chemical complexing agents designed for redox-flow batteries, including bromine chemistries. He has extensive publications on the chemical reactions of flow batteries and works with the Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute (RASEI).
LinkedInWe're a small company in Portland, OR and are always on the lookout for more talented people who want to join us in any capacity. If you want to work, invest, watch or just cheer on Skip Tek please let us know!
