ZincFive has launched a new nickel-zinc (NiZn) battery cabinet for uninterruptible power supply (UPS) systems.

The company this month announced the upcoming release of BC 2 AI, a new nickel-zinc UPS battery cabinet engineered to “meet the unique power demands of artificial intelligence workloads in mission-critical data centers.”

The BC 2 AI was described as the industry’s first AI-optimized battery system purpose-built for dual-mode operation, supporting both AI dynamic workloads and outage protection. The UPS system features 90Ah NiZn batteries designed for high-intensity discharge cycles.

The system offers 280kWb to 325kWb and a maximum discharge current of 800 A.

“AI is transforming the very foundation of data centers, creating new challenges that legacy technologies cannot solve,” said Tod Higinbotham, CEO of ZincFive. “With BC 2 AI, we are delivering a safe, sustainable, and future-ready power solution designed to handle the most demanding AI workloads while continuing to support traditional IT backup. This is a defining moment not just for ZincFive, but for the entire data center industry as it adapts to the AI era.”

ZincFive says GPU clusters can spike to 15 times their idle power levels in milliseconds, sometimes multiple times per second, which can be difficult for many UPS systems to handle.

ZincFive has been promoting nickel-zinc batteries for more than ten years and recently claimed more than 1GW worth of deployments. The company says its nickel-zinc batteries offer a small footprint, minimal maintenance, and high reliability, without the danger of thermal runaway.

While lithium-ion batteries are criticized for their potential danger due to thermal runaway, which has caused serious fires, including an outage in December 2022 that brought down South Korea's Kakao Talk social media application, nickel-zinc batteries are claimed to have minimal maintenance requirements, and no danger of thermal runaway, while providing high reliability for mission-critical data centers.

Data center firm Corscale has been using ZincFive’s nickel-zinc batteries at its Gainesville Crossing data center campus in Northern Virginia since 2022. Wyoming Hyperscale is also using ZincFive.

ABB has previously added ZincFive’s batteries to its UPS offering, as has Vertiv.