Mateo Jaramillo, co-founder and CEO of long-term battery storage innovator Form Energy, hit the trifecta last year: completing its first factory in West Virginia with plans to expand this year; launch its first commercial systems installations in the United States; and raise an attractive $405 million in a private financing round.
The Massachusetts startup’s iron air technology is for limited but large-scale applications that enable continuous storage and discharge of clean energy batteries on the grid for 100 hours, at 10% of the cost of lithium-ion batteries, the company said. . Form Energy’s system absorbs oxygen to convert the iron into oxide, releasing energy-producing electrons. It can then store the excess net energy when it is available to drive the reverse chemical reaction to charge the battery. “What we’ve done is build a device that takes this reaction and harnesses it and allows us to manufacture this battery and deploy it in very large volumes,” Jaramillo said in a media interview last year.
Although iron-air battery technology dates back to the 1960s, it has not moved to widespread commercial acceptance in areas such as electric vehicles due to the size and weight of the battery. But Form Energy systems can take more than 10,000 charge-discharge cycles and avoid the use of hard-to-get and expensive critical minerals. “After seven years of dedicated R&D, product engineering, testing and validation, and most recently trial production, our 100-hour iron-air battery system is ready for series production and commercial deployment,” says Jaramillo, a former Tesla vice president who started its stationary energy storage program. He and other academic and industry experts launched Form Energy in 2017.
The company’s phase one battery plant in Weirton, which was completed in September, is on the site of an early 1900s steel mill near the Ohio River that at one time was the employer largest private in the state. His new project is now winning several hundred million dollars in state and federal funds. “This is just the tip of the iceberg,” said the firm’s vice president and chief project officer Soufiane Halily on a tour of the project. The new plant expansion, which began last year, would add 300,000 square feet of space, with a footprint of 1 million square feet by 2028. Form Energy’s new investment is cited as a key factor in a grant $1.5 million federal grant announced. this month at West Virginia Community College to fund advanced training in energy manufacturing.
CEO Mario Jaromillo
Image courtesy of Form Energy
Driving the company’s effort is private investment backing that totals more than $1.2 billion to date, with the latest investors now including energy maker GE Vernova. That company also agreed to “strategically collaborate” with Form Energy on ramp-up manufacturing and commercial deployment, including engineering, supply chain operations, financing and research.
“Form’s innovative 100-hour air-iron battery systems can be a game-changer, and we’re excited to play a role in helping them achieve global impact,” says GE Vernova President Jessica Uhl. The firm joins existing investors such as Bill Gates-led Breakthrough Energy Ventures and MIT’s Engine Ventures, according to Form Energy. The investment round was also one of the largest of the past year in the clean energy sector, says market monitor Pitchbook.
Form Energy says it has more than 13 GW-hours of battery installation projects in the pipeline that could be online by 2028. Great River Energy appointed Mortenson Construction as EPC contractor for a connected storage project at the 1.5 MW grid using the Form Energy system in Cambridge, Minn., which is scheduled to be operational by the end of the year. Also in the works is an 8.5 GWh battery system at a former Maine paper mill described by Jaramillo’s company as “the world’s largest battery project by energy storage capacity,” as well as the first global project he “contracted before announcing a utility client”.
