Energy storage system and battery manufacturer Aquion Energy has secured another $25 million in venture capital funding, according to recent reports.
The capital will presumably be used to fund the company’s recently disclosed plans to greatly ramp up production at its western Pennsylvania factory, amongst other things.
This recent funding follows on the heels of the company securing $55 million in new funding back in January. It was reported at the time that that funding would be used to expand the company’s manufacturing infrastructure and speed commercial deployment.
Part of the reason for the funding is no doubt that many in the industry are anticipating significant growth in the market over the next few years — owing to the reality of a stressed electrical grid and recent energy storage mandates enacted by several state utility commissions.
Greentechgrid provides more:
Utilities are starting to demand large-scale energy storage, and venture capital is being deployed to meet this emerging need.
Aquion Energy says its sodium-ion battery technology can deliver round-trip energy efficiency of 85%, a 10-year, 5,000-plus-cycle lifespan, energy storage capacity optimized to charge and discharge for multi-hour applications, and perhaps most notably, a price point of $250 per kilowatt-hour — much lower than the $500-and-up per kilowatt-hour of today’s competing technologies.
Aquion’s products are starting to be deployed at a number of pilots in California and Hawaii by energy storage integrators such as Greensmith and Stem.
Aquion is already producing 1.5-kilowatt-hour S10 Battery Stack units, as well as an 18-kilowatt-hour system that combines twelve of its S10 units, for its early customers, CEO Scott Pearson told GTM in an interview. The first is sited at an off-grid system used to store solar power for lighting, air conditioning and small electronics.
Interestingly, Aquion is also currently working to deliver on a previously made agreement with Siemens that will see the company’s batteries sent to the German grid giant for real-world testing. That’s expected to begin sometime this year.
Image Credit: Aquion
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