Earth Day Challenge Awards $400,000 Grand Prize to Urban Electric Power’s Rechargeable Alkaline Battery to Power Critical Facilities During Blackouts

Aiming to power critical facilities during grid blackouts and help prepare the nation for climate change, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has awarded the $400,000 Grand Prize in its Clean Power for Hours Challenge to Urban Electric Power for its rechargeable alkaline battery energy storage system.

DHS launched the prize competition on Earth Day 2023. It’s the second in a series on national climate resilience, and part of an agency-wide effort to address the risks posed by extreme weather events linked to climate change. This Challenge sought innovative power solutions to keep critical facilities such as hospitals, water and wastewater treatment facilities, police and first responders, and places of refuge operating during power outages.

The Grand Prize citation for Urban Electric Power called its solution “easy to use and safer for critical infrastructure in most need of protection than lithium batteries and cleaner than fossil fuels.”

“Extreme weather has increased the frequency of power outages, with the average duration of electricity interruption exceeding five hours,” DHS noted. “While critical facilities have backup generators onsite to supply electricity in the case of a grid failure, they typically rely on a finite supply of diesel fuel onsite.” Other concerns included pollution from extraction through end-of-life disposal; overreliance on foreign supply chains for critical minerals; competition with vehicles for lithium batteries; and ability to capture and use renewable energy.

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Urban Electric Power successfully demonstrated its rechargeable alkaline batteries for DHS in a backup power installation that provided over 10 hours of energy storage capacity. The batteries have also been installed in a variety of facilities from the San Diego Supercomputing Center to commercial offices, a New York State dairy, and an off-grid Navajo home. They are manufactured in Pearl River, New York, 20 miles north of Manhattan along the New Jersey border.

Researchers at the City College of New York invented a way to make the chemistry in alkaline batteries rechargeable. “For stationary energy storage, our zinc-manganese dioxide chemistry offers a safer, more environmentally friendly and cost-effective alternative to either lead or lithium batteries,” said Urban Electric Power founder, Executive Chairman and CEO Sanjoy Banerjee.

“The standard chemistry of these alkaline batteries is certified to pose no risk of ‘thermal runaway,’ or hot, hard-to-extinguish fires, a problem that can face lithium batteries,” said Gabriel Cowles, Urban Electric Power’s Senior Vice President of Strategy and Finance. “So they’re safe for installation in dense urban environments. And the materials can easily be sourced from the existing supply chain for the $13 billion alkaline battery industry, which increases American energy security.”

“With this prize money and recognition on Earth Day from the Department of Homeland Security, we’ll continue to develop our product line, scale up our U.S. manufacturing facility in Pearl River, New York, and enter additional markets,” said Cowles.

The Science and Technology Directorate at DHS launched the Clean Power for Hours Challengein partnership with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Nine finalists were selected in Stage 1 of the Challenge and each received an award of $15,000, advancing to Stage 2 of judging, which included live demonstrations of their technology solutions. In addition to a total of $835,000 in prize money, winners will continue to work with the agencies and receive mentoring and follow-on opportunities.

According to DHS, prize competitions are a way to crowdsource and engage citizen inventors to find interesting ideas or solutions to some of the toughest homeland security challenges. The agency notes that the government has taken this approach almost since the nation’s birth: The White House and U.S. Capitol designs were both results of prize competitions.

Urban Electric Power has previously been recognized by the U.S. Department of Energy, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, EPRI, and Amazon Web Services, among others. This year it completed the second phase of its flagship installation at the San Diego Supercomputer Center.