Energy Vault raises $110 million from SoftBank Vision Fund as energy storage grabs headlines

Imagine a moving tower made of huge cement bricks weighing 35 metric tons. The movement of these massive blocks is powered by wind or solar power plants and is a way to store the energy those plants generate. Software controls the movement of the blocks automatically, responding to changes in power availability across an electric grid to charge and discharge the power that’s being generated.

The development of this technology is the culmination of years of work at Idealab, the Pasadena, Calif.-based startup incubator, and Energy Vault, the company it spun out to commercialize the technology, has just raised $110 million from SoftBank Vision Fund to take its next steps in the world.

Energy storage remains one of the largest obstacles to the large-scale rollout of renewable energy technologies on utility grids, but utilities, development agencies and private companies are investing billions to bring new energy storage capabilities to market as the technology to store energy improves.

The investment in Energy Vault is just one indicator of the massive market that investors see coming as power companies spend billions on renewables and storage. As The Wall Street Journal reported over the weekend, ScottishPower, the U.K.-based utility, is committing to spending $7.2 billion on renewable energy, grid upgrades and storage technologies between 2018 and 2022.

Meanwhile, out in the wilds of Utah, the American subsidiary of Japan’s Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems is working on a joint venture that would create the world’s largest clean energy storage facility. That 1 gigawatt storage would go a long way toward providing renewable power to the Western U.S. power grid and is going to be based on compressed air energy storage, large flow batteries, solid oxide fuel cells and renewable hydrogen storage.

“For 20 years, we’ve been reducing carbon emissions of the U.S. power grid using natural gas in combination with renewable power to replace retiring coal-fired power generation. In California and other states in the western United States, which will soon have retired all of their coal-fired power generation, we need the next step in decarbonization. Mixing natural gas and storage, and eventually using 100% renewable storage, is that next step,” said Paul Browning, president and CEO of MHPS Americas.

Energy Vault’s technology could also be used in these kinds of remote locations, according to chief executive Robert Piconi.

Energy Vault’s storage technology certainly isn’t going to be ubiquitous in highly populated areas, but the company’s towers of blocks can work well in remote locations and have a lower cost than chemical storage options, Piconi said.

“What you’re seeing there on some of the battery side is the need in the market for a mobile solution that isn’t tied to topography,” Piconi said. “We obviously aren’t putting these systems in urban areas or the middle of cities.”

For areas that need larger-scale storage that’s a bit more flexible there are storage solutions like Tesla’s new Megapack.

The Megapack comes fully assembled — including battery modules, bi-directional inverters, a thermal management system, an AC breaker and controls — and can store up to 3 megawatt-hours of energy with a 1.5 megawatt inverter capacity.

The Energy Vault storage system is made for much, much larger storage capacity. Each tower can store between 20 and 80 megawatt hours at a cost of 6 cents per kilowatt hour (on a levelized cost basis), according to Piconi.

The first facility that Energy Vault is developing is a 35 megawatt-hour system in Northern Italy, and there are other undisclosed contracts with an undisclosed number of customers on four continents, according to the company.

One place where Piconi sees particular applicability for Energy Vault’s technology is around desalination plants in places like sub-Saharan Africa or desert areas.

Backing Energy Vault’s new storage technology are a clutch of investors, including Neotribe Ventures, Cemex Ventures, Idealab and SoftBank.

Source. Techcrunch, Johnathan Schreiber, August 14, 2019

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A Boston startup developing a nuclear fusion reactor just got a roughly $50 million boost

After twenty five years of research, scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology think that they have finally cracked the code for the commercialization for nuclear fusion reactions.

Commonwealth Fusion Systems is the fruit of that research. It’s a startup building on decades of research and development that plans to harness the power of the sun to create a cleaner, stable source of energy for consumers. And the company just raised another $50 million in funding from some of the country’s deepest pocketed private investors to continue on its path to commercialization.

The company unveiled its technology and a first $64 million in financing from investors including the Italian energy company, Eni; Breakthrough Energy Ventures, the investment consortium established by the world’s richest men and women, and The Engine, MIT’s own investment vehicle for frontier technologies.

Now Future Ventures, the investment firm created by Steve Jurvetson, Khosla Ventures, Chris Sacca’s Lowercase Capital, Moore Strategic Ventures, Safar Partners, Schooner Capital and Starlight Ventures.

Commonwealth Fusion Systems began as a student project in 2014 whose goal was to reduce the cost of nuclear fusion. The class, which was taught by Dennis Whyte, who is the head of MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, came up with a new reactor technology they called the ARC (standing for “affordable, robust, compact”). That technology still came in with a few billion dollar price tag — something that would make most investors balk.

So the class went back to the drawing board, trying to come up with a minimum viable product that could produce a net energy gain (with more energy coming out of the reaction than was put in).

Net energy gain is the real sticking point for most nuclear fusion technologies. A few research institutions and projects have been able to achieve a fusion reaction, but maintaining it and getting more power out than was put in has been elusive.

In Europe, the ITER reactor, a $20 billion, multi-national effort, is 60% of the way toward its 2045 target for generating energy. Closer to home, startups like TAE Technologies and General Fusion are two other North American entrants looking at lower-cost ways to generate fusion power. And in the UK, First Light Fusion and Tokamak Energy are trying to put their own spin on fusion power.

For Bob Mumgaard, the chief executive of Commonwealth Fusion Systems, everything appears to be proceeding according to plan. on track. “CFS is on track to commercialize fusion and deliver an inherently safe, globally scalable, carbon-free, and limitless energy source,” he said in a statement.

Commonwealth Fusion expects to have its smallest possible reactor built by 2025 thanks to the research that MIT has done on proprietary magnet technology that the company uses to confine its nuclear reaction. In fact, most of the financing will go toward construction of the full scale magnet technology Commonwealth Fusion uses to contain its reactions.

The ultimate goal is to build a fusion reactor that can generate 50 megawatts of energy either as heat or to create electricity using a steam turbine.

Unlike fission reactors, which have significant environmental risks, a fusion power plant would be regulated in much the same way as any industrial facility, says Mumgaard. “The hazard profile of fusion continues to put it in [the category of] an industrial facility. The laws exist, but we haven’t gone out and built the plant yet, so no one has the precedent.”

Mumgaard envisions a 200 megawatt scale reactor that could slot into the place of a wind farm or solar power plant.

“You have to keep track of moving towards vs. going to get to,” he says. “The consensus is we do not have a solution in hand for deep decarbonization of the electricity grid. if you look at where the biggest gains even in renewables.. the biggest gains are in the utility scale were you’re talking hundreds of megawatts of power per site.”

Renewable energy alone will not be enough to meet the demand that’s coming from modern metropolises, according to Mumgaard. “There is huge demand for concentrated energy to power the modern lifestyle.

Public opinion on the issue is increasingly divided — especially among nuclear opponents who count themselves as part of the Sunrise Movement behind the Green New Deal that’s been the talk of the town in energy policy circles. But most energy analysts  argue for a blended approach and say that to get to zero carbon emissions (the ultimate goal for the scientific community), nuclear power will need to be incorporated into the mix.

“We have been looking for the right clean energy investment opportunity in fusion for the past 20 years, said Steve Jurvetson, chief executive of Future Ventures, in a statement. “We wanted a company that was ready to make a business of fusion and we have finally found it with Commonwealth Fusion Systems. The hard science from which their approach is based has been proven by this team as well as leaders in the field around the world.  With some clever engineering, CFS is ready to harness the power of the solar cycle to change the world and usher in the era of clean baseload energy generation for the betterment of all.”

Source. TechCrunch, Johnathan Bieber, June 27, 2019

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Canada Week. Pangaea Announces Final Close of Fourth Fund at $95 Million CAD

By Isabella Kirkwood

Pangaea Ventures which invests in advanced materials, announced it has completed the final close of Pangaea Ventures Fund IV, with commitments of $95 million CAD from organizations like VanCity and the BC Tech Fund.

Fund IV has made six investments to date, in materials-driven companies addressing a variety of market applications. The fund’s advanced materials portfolio is not specifically tech-focused but is looking to invest in startups with products in display materials, medical devices, 5G data electronics, and the 3D printing of human tissue.

“We are pleased to have completed the fundraising for Fund IV, and to see growth over our third fund,” said Chris Erickson, general partner of Pangaea Ventures. “We have a good mix of LPs that include managed by Kensington Capital Partners.”

The fourth fund aims to bring together a dozen multinational corporations as strategic LPs. The fund saw renewed commitments from partners of Fund III, including CoorsTek, JSR, and Mitsubishi Chemical Holdings. Fund IV has also brought in commitments from Doosan, GC Ventures, Henkel, Lam Research, Sekisui, Severstal, Shin-Etsu, TOSOH, and Adidas, bringing Pangaea’s total LP count to 25. Fund III closed in 2012 at $100 million USD.

Pangea was first established in 2000 and has an office in Vancouver. The firm built a portfolio addressing multi-billion dollar markets in energy, electronics, health, and sustainability. Pangaea led a $7.9 million CAD investment in AEPONYX, a Montreal-based micro-optical switch provider, to accelerate the commercial production of the startup’s planar micro-optical switch chips.

“The BC Tech Fund was established to invest in emerging technology across multiple sectors, including cleantech,” said Gerri Sinclair, managing director of Kensington Capital Partners. “Pangaea’s record for helping advanced materials reach global success made them an attractive fund through which we could support the cleantech start-up ecosystem.”

Pangea said it expects Fund IV to make six to eight more investments.

Source. Betakit, Isabella Kirkwood, May 2, 2019

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