This week’s episode of “WisBusiness: the Podcast” is with Patrick Sullivan, CEO, co-founder and co-inventor at Flux XII.
Sullivan has spent the last few years as a graduate student researcher at UW-Madison, with a focus on battery chemistry, energy analysis and policy.
“What I realized early on is that we’re often just trading one problem for another in the clean energy transition,” he said. “So my goal is really to build sustainable solutions.”
The company has developed a new “flow battery” technology for grid-scale energy storage, as an alternative to the standard lithium-ion batteries. Sullivan argues lithium-ion batteries were “really never meant for” such large-scale applications.
“When I’m talking about grid energy storage, I’m talking about shipping container-sized battery systems going out next to wind farms, next to solar farms … What we’ve developed is called a flow battery technology,” he explained. “This is a technology where you dissolve your battery materials in water, so it’s non-flammable, and it can be a lot more scalable.”
While others have previously developed flow battery technology, Flux XII’s solution is a new form of battery chemistry that can improve the performance of these batteries, Sullivan said.
The company is currently finalizing its pre-seed round of financing for about $1 million, he said.
“What we’re looking to do in the near-term, in 2024, is use these funds to build out the team further and to also get toward a prototype which could roughly power a house … to show this technology works on practical systems,” he said.
Listen to the podcast below, sponsored by UW-Madison:
