Energy storage firm ESS Inc will use $30 million in new funding to expand and automate the manufacturing process of its second-generation iron flow battery technology.
The US firm plans to use the cash secured in its Series C investment round on developing production capacity at its Wilsonville, Oregon, facility up to 1GWh.
An ESS spokesman told BEST: One of the unique aspects of ESS iron flow battery technology is the extremely low capital costs required to set up the manufacturing of battery modules.The company’s manufacturing investment requires only a fraction of the tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, of dollars that are required by lithium-ion batteries to achieve similar GWh scale production capacity.”
They added that in the context of lithium-ion manufacturers, they mean total power, whereas ESS was aiming to scale up to 1 GWh/year for systems that could range from 4 to 10 hours in energy duration.
The latest round of funding was led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures and SoftBank Group’s SB Energy, and includes new investors Evergy Ventures and leading Southeast Asia-based chemical company PTT Global Chemical (GC).
Early backers who also invested in this round were: BASF Venture Capital, Cycle Capital Management, Presidio Partners Investment Management, IPM Group, and Pangaea Ventures.
Rich Hossfeld, senior vice president, SB Energy, said: “Cost-effective long-duration energy storage is becoming a reality, and is needed to improve grid resiliency and enable the high renewables power system of the future.
“We are very interested in long-duration energy storage technologies and see great potential to deploy iron flow battery technology.”