Startup bets on cheap and abundant zinc — and the emergence of a market for long-duration storage. Canadian startup e-Zn has raised money to store clean energy far longer than currently available batteries allow, using cheap and abundant zinc. On Wednesday, the company received CAD $2 million ($1.5 million) in non-dilutive grant funding from Sustainable […]
5 Tangible Advances for Long-Duration Energy Storage in 2019
The big wins for long-duration storage always seem to be just around the corner. This year brought concrete signs of progress. Following long-duration storage is like rooting for a home team that’s always about to win next year. Lithium-ion batteries utterly dominate grid storage deployments these days. That’s great for the cost decline narrative, in […]
Flow Batteries Struggle in 2019 as Lithium-Ion Marches On
Save for a few rare announcements, the promising technology class has gone quiet. October’s SoftBank-led investment in iron flow battery startup ESS represented an unusual event in 2019: a piece of good news for the flow battery sector. The $30 million cash injection was a rare sign that there may still be life in an […]
Iron Flow Battery Startup ESS Raises $30M From SoftBank and Breakthrough
The flow battery survivor marks the latest in a series of recent investments in unconventional long-duration storage technologies. Iron flow battery startup ESS raised an additional $30 million to take its technology from pilots to commercial scale. Since 2011, the company has been developing a low-cost, nonflammable long-duration storage technology to compete across domains where […]
The Arizona Battery Explosion Is Changing Conventional Wisdom on Safety
Six months later, GTM gets an exclusive update from APS and Fluence on an event that’s forcing a new look at grid battery engineering. It’s been nearly six months since an explosion ripped through a grid battery near Phoenix and upended the industry’s understanding of the technology’s safety. The McMicken conflagration injured first responders and […]
Your Energy Storage Cheat Sheet: How to Impress at ESI
We can’t teach you social grace, but we can give you some decent icebreakers. After the socially challenging strip-mall accommodations of Anaheim last year, the good folks who make solar and energy storage happen are no doubt craving real interaction in some place resembling an actual community. And they’re in luck: Salt Lake City has […]
Form Energy Raises $40M Series B for Super-Long-Duration Grid Storage
Italy’s Eni joins list of heavyweight backers as Massachusetts-based Form looks to unlock “baseload renewables.” Long-duration storage startup Form Energy thought that solving the problem of months-long grid storage would take a decade. But its last year of work advanced faster than expected. Based on that progress, the team of industry veterans has fast-tracked development […]
This Is A Game-Changer For Lithium-Ion Batteries
The latest news in the battery space has been about alternatives to lithium-ion technology, which still dominates the space in electronics and cars but is being increasingly challenged from several directions, notably solid-state batteries. Now, a team of researchers has reported they have improved lithium-ion batteries in a way that could discourage some challengers. In […]
Livguard bets big on lithium-ion batteries
The Gurugram-based firm raised ₹170 crore funding from private equity firm ChrysCapital in April Launched in 2014, the energy solutions brand is part of the SAR Group founded by Rakesh Malhotra and Navneet Kapoor Mumbai: Livguard Energy Technologies Pvt. Ltd, which makes automotive batteries, inverters, stabilizers and residential solar solutions, is betting on lithium-ion batteries for […]
A Serious Contender To Lithium-Ion Batteries
Sodium batteries are among the more advanced challengers to lithium ion dominance but, like other alternatives to Li-ion batteries, they have been plagued by persistent problems with their performance. Now, a team of South Korean scientists have reported an improvement that could bring sodium batteries into the spotlight. The team reports in a study published […]