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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.
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The cost of energy storage has stalled adoption of renewable power. Energy Vault has a solution.
Because solar and wind power are now cheaper to produce than energy from fossil fuels, the only obstacle that remains to the mass adoption of renewable power is the amount of money utilities need to spend to store the energy those systems produce.
Right now, storing 100 megawatts of renewable energy (enough to power roughly 600,000 homes) means spending roughly $65.6 million on massive batteries like the kind made by Tesla, or relying on huge pumped hydro-electric storage projects that essentially create man-made dams where the release of water spins turbines to generate energy (those projects are typically far larger than 100 megawatts).
A new company called Energy Vault, launched from Bill Gross’ Idealab incubator in Pasadena, Calif., has developed a technology, based on the principles of pumped hydro storage, that it claims can slash the cost of energy storage to a fraction of the current price and make renewable energy cost-effective all day, every day.
As climate change worries mount, finding a solution that can make renewables even more compelling and cost-effective isn’t just a good business — it’s a global priority. 
Energy Vault’s technology consists of a 33-story-high, six-armed crane with booms extending to nearly the length of a football field (about 87 yards). That crane is surrounded by 5,000 huge concrete blocks weighing roughly 35 metric tons altogether (or around 172,000 pounds).
“These would typically be built out near wind farms or solar plants,” said Robert Piconi, the chief executive of Energy Vault. “This is not something that you’d drop in the middle of the city.”
The cranes are controlled by a software system that manages the movement of the cement blocks to either store the energy generated by solar or wind farms, or discharge that energy onto the power grid.
According to Piconi, each of the company’s systems will have 35 megawatt hours of nominal energy capacity and 4 megawatts of peak power capacity. Ramp times occur in as little as a millisecond with 100 percent power achieved in 2.9 seconds.
The systems have roundtrip efficiencies of roughly 90 percent and there’s no energy loss, as the technology relies on mechanical energy from incredibly durable materials that have a roughly 30-year lifetime.
And all of this at a price tag of around $7 million to $8 million per system, according to Piconi. What makes the system even more sustainable, according to Piconi, is the use of recycled concrete that was only going to be landfilled — instead of new cement construction.
Energy Vault has already set up a demonstration system in Biasca, Switzerland, next to the company’s Lugarno headquarters. That demonstration plant likely had a role in the company’s ability to sign up a clutch of initial customers, including The Tata Power Company Limited, India’s largest integrated power company, to deploy an initial 35 MWh Energy Vault system by 2019.
“Innovation in energy storage represents the largest and most near-term opportunity to accelerate renewable deployments and bring us closer to replacing fossil fuels as the primary source to meet the world’s continual growth in energy demand,” said Bill Gross, co-founder, Energy Vault and founder of Idealab. “We’re excited to support Energy Vault in bringing this groundbreaking technology to the market.”
Indeed, over the next two years, Energy Vault expects customers to build between 500 megawatts and one gigawatt of storage capacity using its systems, according to Piconi.
“We have customers on every continent to build these units,” he said.
Piconi, a former Danaher executive, met Gross 12 years ago as the Idealab founder was beginning his push into renewable energy technologies. The two men stayed in touch and began seriously contemplating the creation of Energy Vault after nearly a decade of collaboration and contact.
It was back in 2017 that Piconi, Gross and fellow co-founder and chief technical officer Andrea Pedretti hit upon the idea for Energy Vault’s novel approach to energy storage.
“It became clear to him a few years ago how important storage was going to be,” said Piconi.
The three men started looking at the efficiencies available through pumped hydroelectric storage, and began brainstorming ways to mimic that process using mechanical energy. “We looked at a steel tower first, but that was too expensive. We thought about water in a tower pumped up, but there were efficiency issues there,” Piconi said. “Then we got to the concrete bricks and the crane.”
The concrete was important for the cost of materials, and because of the energy intensity and pollution that’s involved with manufacturing cement, the team decided to use recycled cement to make the blocks that its energy storage system would use.
Enter, Cemex, one of the largest cement manufacturers in the world, which has joined with Energy Vault as a partner.
Energy Vault has already raised capital through several “seed” rounds to develop its technology and get the prototype in Switzerland up and running.
“Energy Vault’s team has developed a disruptive platform, and we are enthusiastic to work with their team to deploy an environmentally efficient and cost-effective energy storage solution that is highly viable,” said Dr. Davide Zampini, head of Cemex Global R&D and IP. “We share a common commitment to enable a future where resources are used responsibly, which is paramount to Cemex’s strategy for sustainable development.”
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CodeSpark raises $4.1 million for games that teach kids how to code
A Los Angeles startup called codeSpark has raised $4.1 million in seed funding for web and mobile games that teach kids how to code, even before they know how to read and write effectively. CodeSpark’s games were developed for kids 4 to 9 years old, and with a goal of not just teaching them STEM concepts, but engaging boys and girls equally well. The games feature characters who are… Read More
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