Vessels represent the future of stationary battery installations worldwide.EnerVenue.com
How come news of EnerVenue creating a 1 million square foot Gigafactory in Kentucky is not creating all the news in the nation? In my opinion, it need to.
CEO of EnerVenue, Jörg Heinemann
EnerVenue.com
EnerVenue produced an announcement about the Kentucky facility in late March, revealing that it will be capable to make up to 1.five gigawatt-hours of power storage capacity per year (sufficient to energy far more than a million houses). According to CEO Jorg Heinemann, this major step is just the initial of several in the subsequent handful of years, EnerVenue plans to make other plants in North America, with a total production of about 20 gigawatt-hours per year.
The firm actually can not make more capacity quick sufficient. Heinemann confided to me that EnerVenue has a backlog of 7. gigawatt-hours. In other words, the 4-and-a-half-year production of the new Kentucky plant was talked about as quickly as the ribbon was reduce at the groundbreaking ceremony. And purchasers are attempting to get ahead of the backlog by paying a premium for their orders.
Re-study that final sentence and you will recognize why I am so optimistic about the future of EnerVenue.
For these of you unfamiliar with EnerVenue, verify out the report I wrote a handful of years ago for this column titled EnerVenue: The Batteries We Need to have for On the internet Storage and my December 2021 story about EnerVenue becoming shut down difficult oversubscribed Series A funding round led by SLB (NISE: SLB, formerly Schlumberger) and Saudi Aramco.
1 of these beauties, but EnerVenue storage containers are terrific for stationary storage.EnerVenue.com
From exactly where I sit, EnerVenue’s revolutionary metal-hydrogen batteries—adapted from technologies established for years in space satellite applications—have the possible to reshape grid and industrial power storage applications about the planet. It really is not difficult for me to consider EnerVenue’s power storage vessels becoming the regular battery technologies for all stationary installations.
EnerVenue batteries are sturdy, effective and recyclable they are also safer and significantly significantly less finicky than lithium-ion and permit flexibility in charging speed. Batteries working with a equivalent chemistry — nickel-hydrogen — have completed millions of charge/discharge cycles in orbiting spacecraft, so EnerVenue feels comfy supplying clients a 20-year / 20,000-cycle warranty.
These are the rewards that EnerVenue talks about in their press releases, but I think there are numerous other rewards that can not and need to not be overlooked.
Initially, the supplies utilised in batteries are readily offered on just about every continent, minimizing the fragility and carbon footprint of the provide chain and enabling the localization of production. I was appalled when I lately study a book about the provide chain of lithium-ion batteries referred to as Cobalt Red, which sheds light on the systematic exploitation of workers—many of whom are children—in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Let’s place it this way: if you use any item that runs on a lithium-ion battery, you are practically surely a user of kid slavery.
Lukushi cassiterite mine on February 17, 2022 in Manon. – The Democratic Republic of Congo is wealthy in lithium, an critical mineral for electric car or truck batteries, which nests in the remains of the former mining town of Manono in the southeast of the nation in Tanganyika Province. To get out of poverty, Manon residents, most of whom are artisanal miners, are pinning their hopes on an investment by Australian firm AVZ Minerals, which plans to invest $600 million in the building of a lithium mine (Photo: Junior KANNAH/ AFP) (Photo by JUNIOR KANNAH/AFP by way of Getty Photos) AFP by way of Getty Photos
The reality that EnerVenue batteries do not call for the use of scarce or geographically concentrated raw supplies in jurisdictions run by corrupt powers is, in my opinion, a large optimistic.
Second, the shape of the EnerVenue batteries is significant and their building does not call for delicate micro-engineering. In reality, Heinemann tells me that a human with a uncomplicated mechanical tool can make an EnerVenue battery that meets operational specifications. This implies EnerVenue facilities do not will need to be set up with fancy, custom robotics. EnerVenue can use off-the-shelf production gear and can train workers to quickly make and inspect units. This simplification considerably lowers the capital charges of EnerVenue’s plants compared to lithium-ion plants and, I think, need to reduced operating charges as effectively.
The financial and technical positive aspects of EnerVenue technologies are apparent so apparent that the sensible cash has currently placed a major bet on this Fremont, California-primarily based start off-up that was born out of a Stanford University lab. A single of the 5 pillars of SLB’s New Power business enterprise unit is power storage, and the EnerVenue storage answer is the cornerstone on which SLB rests its stationary battery supplying.
in the front row in a blue shirt. CTO Dr. Yi Cui is in the front row in a gray jacket.EnerVenue.com
I am dying to have an attic complete of EnerVenue batteries myself, but alas, Heinemann tells me it is at the moment focused on network and industrial shoppers. Even if I cannot have some friendly, orange power storage containers in my personal attic, I am hoping my neighborhood utility firm will take a web page from Dr. Lorenzo Christov’s distributed grid model and set up a neighborhood storage base layer to make my neighborhood far more resilient. and far more self-adequate.
Heinemann and Christov know, as I do, that if we are to have any opportunity of sustaining the progress of human civilization and preserving the viability of our biosphere, we ought to radically rethink the way we use and distribute energy.
Intelligent investors take note.
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I have spent most of my skilled life as an equity analyst and consultant. Now I use my encounter in monetary markets to enable start off-ups fight climate transform and restore our ecosystem. Ahead of becoming a contributor to Forbes, I worked as a hedge fund threat manager, investment banker in Tokyo and New York, marketplace strategist for Morningstar, and director of investigation for a monetary information startup in Chicago, as effectively as publishing a effectively-reviewed solutions book (The Intelligent Solution Investor, 2014, McGraw-Hill). My knowledge in private and public firm valuations has been sought by institutions such as the Globe Bank and Blackrock, and I have served as CFO and CEO / CFO for numerous ClimateTech start off-ups.
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