When Bigger Batteries Are Better

Dutch startup Zenon says heftier cells can work for industrial storage and price arbitrage

- Paul Tullis

On a sunny winter 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 power about a dozen homes-or, in this case, 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 plant's owner.

Albeton, the Netherlands' biggest concrete maker, suffers from the electricity shortages that plague many businesses in the country, where the grid is often maxed out. So the company contacted Dutch startup Zenon Energy Europe BV to make a battery system that will meet its needs today, but can double in size as Albeton's trucks shift to electric in anticipation of a diesel ban Amsterdam plans to implement starting in 2030.

The Netherlands' electrical grid is at capacity. With high demand during business hours and solar and wind producing an excess at other times, prices fluctuate wildly throughout the day. Zenon, founded in 2020 by a pair of oil industry castoffs, designs its products for just such situations, allowing users to charge batteries overnight when costs are low and use the stored energy when prices are high-just what Albeton plans to do.