Energy storage is an exciting space for researchers, investors and established energy industry players alike because as technology advances and costs come down the potential for truly disruptive – and highly lucrative – innovation feels almost within grasp.

The ability to cheaply and reliably store and dispatch utility-scale volumes of electricity will alter existing power systems in countless ways. The researchers who crack the code will go into the history books alongside Edison and Tesla, while investors who get in on the ground floor stand to make billions.

This video highlights a brand new company commercializing nascent battery technology that was born in a City University of New York lab with some government funding, visionary leadership and strong entrepreneurial spirit.

“For applications ranging from car batteries to power protection to grid-scale storage, the zinc anode batteries developed at the CUNY Energy Institute deliver electricity at the lowest cost per cycle. UEP’s [Urban Electric Power] innovative zinc anode rechargeable battery technologies were developed at the CUNY Energy Institute with approximately $9 million in support from industry and government sources, including NYSERDA, Con Edison, and the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E),” according to the company’s website.