ENERGY storage company ZBB Energy is poised to write the next instalment in its colourful history with a $6 million listing on the Australian Stock Exchange due for March 9.
ENERGY storage company ZBB Energy is poised to write the next instalment in its colourful history with a $6 million listing on the Australian Stock Exchange due for March 9.
Among ZBB’s memorable moments are inclusion among the first companies to list on Perth’s second board, being analysed as a takeover target by Enron, and almost joining the herd of energy stocks listing on Nasdaq.
The company’s main product is a zinc bromine battery that enables the storage of very large amounts of electricity.
Utilities, for example, can use that stored power to take pressure off their systems during peak times.
Businesses can also use the batteries to buy power off peak when it is cheaper and use it to run their businesses.
The company makes its batteries in 50-kilowatt-hour modules that can be ‘stacked’ to reach the required storage rate.
It has developed a 10-battery, 500-kilowatt-hour stack that fits into a standard shipping container, making it easy to move to where it is needed.
ZBB already has a $US2 million contract with the Californian Energy Commission to deliver and install a two-megawatt-hour battery system for Pacific Gas and Electric, and a $17 million distribution agreement for California, Nevada and Arizona with a company called Power Plus to target non-utility businesses.
Despite those orders, ZBB’s technology has not won favour with Western Australia’s main power utility, Western Power.
“We have 650 shareholders out of our total 720 based in Perth and they can’t understand why Western Power won’t talk to us,” ZBB chief financial officer Geoffrey Hann said.
A Western Power spokesman said the utility had assessed the ZBB technology for grid reinforcement but had found other options to be more cost effective.
“The technology is more suited to individual business or industrial customers,” the spokesman said.
ZBB is not letting its local power utility’s lack of interest slow it down, however.
It plans to use the funds from its initial public offering to expand its battery building facilities in the US and to pursue the other opportunities.
In its prospectus ZBB estimates its annual market to be worth $US5 billion.
Mr Hann said the company made the switch from a research and development company to a manufacturing company last year.
It had spent the previous three years field testing its zinc bromide battery.
According to the company’s profit and loss statements for 2003-04, it made a $US1.9 million loss, up from the $US1.5 million loss of the previous year.
Mr Hann said the company expected to make a small loss this year, due to the listing costs it would be facing, but to post a profit in 2005-06.
ZBB was initially formed, with the help of Perth businessman Frank Parry, to commercialise zinc bromide battery technology created by Murdoch University scientist Jim Parker.
That company, then called ZBB Technology, went to the second board in 1987 but that move ultimately ended badly when the stock market crashed in the same year.
The company had put its funds on deposit with its merchant bank Duke Pacific Finance, which went into liquidation.
It tried to back-door list onto the ASX in 2003 through sapphire miner GTN Resources but that deal fell away when ZBB fell just short of the $10 million it was required to raise.
