A rapid-charging and non-flammable battery developed in part by 2019 Nobel Prize winner John Goodenough has been licensed for development by the Canadian electric utility Hydro-Québec. The utility says it hopes to have the technology ready for one or more commercial partners in two years.

Hydro-Québec, according to Karim Zaghib, general director of the utility’s Center of Excellence in Transportation Electrification and Energy Storage, has been commercializing patents with Goodenough’s parent institution, the University of Texas at Austin, for the past 25 years. //

The utility’s first-generation lithium battery dates back, Zaghib said, to more than 40 years ago. “Hydro-Québec was the first company to work on true lithium batteries in 1979,” he said.