The companies, located throughout New York State, will use the funding to turn energy storage technologies with proven technical feasibility into working prototypes.

Under the terms of these awards, each recipient must match NYSERDA’s funding, leveraging NYSERDA’s $1.4 million with a total of $2.2 million in additional private investment.

This is the second of three rounds of funding to help members of NY-BEST move promising technologies toward commercialization. NY-BEST is an industry-focused coalition working to establish New York as a global leader in energy storage technology for heavy-duty transportation, electric grid and other storage applications.

Projects include:

• Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) Technologies LLC, $218,000. Through collaboration with SUNY’s College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (CNSE) and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, BESS Technologies aims to develop and commercialize an electrode that incorporates graphene-based materials to create lithium-ion batteries that can store more energy and charge faster than those currently deployed.

• Bettergy Corp., $189,000. Bettergy plans to improve and demonstrate a low-cost zinc air-flow battery that could be used for grid storage applications, including storing renewable electricity.

• Custom Electronics Inc., $250,000. The company plans to develop an ultracapacitor technology with increased energy storage potential. Custom Electronics is seeking to market its technology in industrial power electronic applications and in hybrid vehicles, where it could augment conventional batteries by capturing energy generated through braking.

• Electromotive Designs LLC, $250,000. – The company is working on a low-cost, easy-to-install hybrid-electric engine for buses and trucks using ultracapacitors manufactured by Ioxus in Oneonta. The devices would capture regenerative braking energy to accelerate the vehicle from a stop, and will be tested by Verizon. The company reports that each bus that uses this system could displace approximately 500 gallons of diesel fuel per year and 6.5 tons of greenhouse gases.

• Eos Energy Storage, $250,000. Eos is seeking to scale-up and commercialize a novel zinc battery technology with a low-cost, energy-dense and inherently safe design. NYSERDA funding will support field testing of Eos’ first full-scale sub-module, the basic building block of its larger 1MW/6MWh Aurora battery. The project will take place in New York City in partnership with Con Edison, with the goal of demonstrating the benefits of various distributed energy storage applications.

• Watt Fuel Cell Corp., $250,000. Watt is building a prototype system capable of providing electricity and heat from a portable solid-oxide fuel cell. The project has applications for use in the military and for combined heat and power projects, including backup power during outages.