Form Energy's Iron-Air Battery for Multi-Day Storage
The Energy Gang
Wood Mackenzie
4.6 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 18 August 2021
⏱️ 51 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This episode originally aired on The Interchange.
Back in 2016, Mateo Jaramillo left Tesla, where he was leading the stationary energy storage business, and started looking for a new challenge to tackle. He took on long-duration energy storage -- not long duration like 8 hours or 12 hours, but days or weeks or more. In 2017 he came on the show to talk about it.
He formed a company, now Form Energy, that has been toiling on this problem in stealth mode. Apart from saying they were building a "metal air" battery, his team held the technology close to the vest.
That is, until last week.
The company announced a $200M Series D financing led by ArcelorMittal, the world's largest steelmaker, and in the process finally made public the technology, which is an iron air chemistry.
Full disclosure: Shayle led Energy Impact Partners’ investment in Form.
Shayle and Mateo discuss the technology itself and the counterintuitive economics that Mateo believes will make it work. They also examine how it beat out the alternatives and how it might complement more efficient, but more expensive lithium-ion. It turns out financial modeling was far more important than spec sheets in understanding the tradeoffs.
They tackle the critical question: Where exactly are the profitable applications of this technology before we hit very high 80% renewables?
They also talk about the semantics of long-duration storage vs. multi-day storage, why Mateo hates holy grails, and potential partnerships with tofu companies.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This week we are unveiling the secret sauce of one of the hottest battery storage |
| 0:04.4 | companies today, Form Energy. Form is developing a metal air storage system that |
| 0:09.3 | could last for weeks. It just closed a $200 million venture round and it's now |
| 0:13.6 | unveiling how the battery works for the first time and that unveiling comes |
| 0:17.4 | courtesy of another podcast we produce, The Inner Change. That show is hosted by |
| 0:22.0 | Shail Khan of Energy Impact Partners. He is a long-time collaborator, a truly |
| 0:26.8 | great thinker in the world of decarbonization. If you don't listen to that show, |
| 0:29.8 | do it, subscribe, and you'll get lots of deep dives from Shail and guests on |
| 0:35.2 | the forces behind the climate tech search, including with executives and |
| 0:38.9 | inventors and people who are pushing the envelope in energy tech. So enjoy |
| 0:44.8 | this conversation. Before we get into it, a quick word we are brought to you by |
| 0:48.5 | Sungrove as a leading provider of PV inverter solutions across the world. Sungrove |
| 0:52.8 | is delivered more than 10 gigawatts of inverters to the Americas alone and |
| 0:56.3 | 154 gigawatts in total across the globe. Sungrove is also providing energy |
| 1:01.5 | storage systems to some of the largest projects in the U.S. like the Chisholm |
| 1:05.5 | Grid Project in Fort Worth, Texas, learning about Sungrove's energy storage |
| 1:09.4 | solutions by emailing them at info at sungroamericas.com. We're also brought to |
| 1:14.6 | you by S&C Electric. Non-Wire's alternatives like micro-grids can provide more |
| 1:19.1 | sustainable, resilient, and economic ways to deliver reliable power and they |
| 1:23.4 | can be designed for your unique needs. S&C Electric Company has provided |
| 1:27.4 | innovative power solutions for over a hundred years and it helps utilities |
| 1:31.4 | and commercial customers find the best solutions to meet their energy needs, |
... |
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