Hi drobx,
Yes you can use the zinc8 battery to power your home while the grid is down. Yes you could power your home from it. So it definitely would be useful to power your off grid residence. But you could not use the Zinc8 battery alone. You would have to have something charging it in the form of photovoltaics (solar panels), wind, or perhaps a combination of solar and a diesel generator with auto transfer switch when the batteries need charging and the sun isn’t out to stimulate the Photovoltaic modules. And depending on if the loads in your house are DC or AC appliance will depend on whether you need an off grid inverter (if you have AC appliances) or a DC to DC converter (if you have DC appliances) and yes this would be an additional expense - for example, zinc8 would not be providing those inverters or converters that integrate their battery into the residence “system” level electrical system. And Because AC appliances are usually more available, people with off gird applications usually go with an off grid inverter. And you can hook up your battery (Zinc8 or any battery) to the off grid inverter and the Photovoltaic wiring would also go to that same off grid inverter. The output of the inverter would go to the main panel that feeds your off grid residence and the loads within it. And how much capacity you get out of the your battery (again Zinc8 or any battery) would depend on its size. And you determine the size of the battery based on the loads in your off grid residence and the days of autonomy that you need. Days of autonomy is the number of days you would need your battery (or battery bank) to provide power to all your loads without needing to be charged. So depending on how many lights and appliances, etc you need to power, and how many days/hours in a row you want your batteries to provide power, will depend on how big your battery needs to be. Usually days of autonomy is a number around 3 and maybe up to 5 days - and the reason you dont usually need that number to be 7 is because you should be able to count on solar array to be enough to provide as a good charging source most of the time - but just in case the sun doesn’t shine for 3 days straight (for example) you’ll want your batteries to be able to handle the loads in your residence until that sun comes back out....and typically you’ll have a small diesel generator as a backup for the solar in case the sun doesn’t come out for weeks. By the way, a little cocktail party knowledge for you....solar power can be in the form of photovoltaics or wind generators (which both Biden and Trump have erroneously referred to as wind mills - wind mills are typically used for pumping water from the ground, whereas wind generators convert wind into electrical energy). Also, technically speaking, we dont say “solar panels” and instead we say “photovoltaic modules or PV modules”. There is such thing as a “solar panel” but its not what the general public thinks a “solar panel” is - the general public says “solar panels” and from a pure technical standpoint, they should instead be saying “PV module” or “photovoltaic module” and not solar panel. The reason is that a while back, builders that needed to hoist up an entire row of PV modules pre-strung together on the roof of a house would refer to the entire row of pre-strung PV modules as a “solar panel”. But now-a-days that pre-strung row of PV modules is just referred to as a “series string” and you may have several series strings that get tied together in parallel with a combiner box which form a “solar array”. So the hierarchy is PV cell — PV module — PV series string — PV array.
Anyhow, the above description I gave you is an example of how you would integrate a Zinc8 battery into your off grid residence - but just know that you could use that same concept with any battery not just the one Zinc8 is making...Yes it is true the Zinc8 battery is much much different than a typical electrochemical storage device like the lead-acid battery in your car or the batteries that typically make up a battery bank for a residential off grid system. But in the end, the Zinc8 battery is just that (a battery) and you would use all the same concepts above to determine the capacity needed to power your residential off-grid load.
All that said, the residential market segment is not part of Zinc8s business plan. They are strictly designing their battery for micro-grid, battery backup and utility scale applications that are way way bigger than any typical residential off-grid applications. And they are targeting 8+ hour applications (even 12 or more hours depending on the size of the battery), meaning they are designing batteries that are capable of delivering daily energy on the order of 100s of kilo-Watt hours or even on the order of MegaWatt hours and possibly even GigaWatt hours as they go forward. That’s way more than any typical off grid residence would require but would be very useful to offset the energy typically used by a utility company.
Let me know if you’d like to know anything else or if I didn’t answer your question the way you were looking for....Ill try to reword in a different way.
Just curious have you taken a position in Zinc8 yet? If not, there are a lot of factors right now in the higher level markets that I think are going to trickle down and cause a correction which may cause Zinc8 to go back to the low 50s or even high 40s. But I am not selling and I would recommend that if you want to take a long term position and hold, see if you can get in the lower 50s as your entry point. If you already have a position - good luck! I notice they are complete with their portion of the 75 house milestone they’ve been trying to meet - but the integration is not yet complete....and I’m pretty sure they will announce a formal PR when the entire integration is complete and when they do this could test $1 - but again, there are lots of high level factors in the market right now that could put a damper on that but long term - its a no brainer so dont be afraid to take a position now if you plan on holding long term. Also, they are going to need to raise a significant amount of money to get ready for production in 2023 - so at some point there will be some dilution. Again, this is better as a long term trade and not so much a day trade.
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