Battery technology: Form Energy
'a solution that has a very clear
path,' CEO says
Form Energy's recent announcement about its new iron-air battery could be a major leap forward in the transition to renewable electricity.
“We set out about four years ago to develop the kind of battery that it would take to enable a fully renewable and reliable electric grid,” Mateo Jaramillo, CEO and co-founder of Form Energy and former head of battery development at Tesla, said on Yahoo Finance Live (video above). “A few years later, a lot of hard work, some fantastic breaks going our way in the lab, but also the market moving very, very quickly to decarbonize the electricity sector — and we find ourselves today with a solution that has a very clear path to get into the market.”
Should that path remain clear, the Boston-based company aims to deliver its first commercial product by 2025.
“The winds are really on our backs, so to speak, on this market,” Jaramillo said. “And there's just tremendous demand for new infrastructure solutions, which allow more and more renewable power to be brought onto the grid — again, primarily because it's the cheapest power to be had out there.”
A more reliable alternative
Jaramillo noted that Form Energy's iron-air battery — which is both low-cost and long-duration — would complement existing lithium-ion battery systems.
But with the capability to run for over 100 hours, iron-air batteries could offer a more reliable storage solution for renewable energy. The battery works through a chemical process of "reversible rusting." When discharging, the battery takes in oxygen that reacts with iron to create rust. When charging, an electrical current converts that rust back into iron and the battery releases oxygen.
Furthermore, at $20/kWh, the iron-air battery would be more cost-competitive with nuclear and natural gas power plants. For comparison, utility-scale lithium-ion battery systems have been projected to cost $208/kWh in 2030.
“The cheapest marginal cost of electricity today comes from solar power," Jaramillo said. "And so that's really driving this big trend that we're sort of sitting just behind."
Innovations and investment in battery technology have largely been driven by plummeting costs of renewables. The cost of solar photovoltaic power alone dropped by 89% in the last decade.
However, renewables still remain a small percentage (around 20%) of the overall U.S. energy mix. One reason for the laggard adoption of renewables despite competitive costs has been inefficient or expensive energy storage. Unlike fossil fuels, wind and solar power are intermittent and require capable storage systems to keep power plants humming when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing.
For that reason, battery innovations are critical to enabling cheap, abundant, and renewable electricity everywhere.
The $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill could also provide a boost to the renewable energy market and nudge the United States toward its carbon emission goals — although the current bill omits many of the clean energy initiatives that President Biden pledged in January.
“I think certainly having more domestic manufacturing is a critical part of any piece of the infrastructure bill that goes forward," Jaramillo said, adding that “being able to make the kinds of energy storage solutions that we need in our system right here in the United States is critically important.”
The United States is the second-largest manufacturer of battery cells behind China, which has dominated the industry.
“Obviously, iron is very abundant in the United States,” Jaramillo said. “We make a ton of it. We make a lot of steel. And that's one reason why we chose that element. It is something that can be made right here in this market at tremendous scale using existing processes today.”
Grace is an assistant editor for Yahoo Finance and a UX writer for Yahoo products
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