Startup introduces iron ore to battery race and attracts ArcelorMittal conglomerate

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Several minerals have emerged in the race for batteries capable of powering an increasingly electrified world.

Now, a solution developed by an American startup founded 4 years ago, backed by Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos’ climate fund, may soon introduce an abundant and unlikely commodity into the game: iron ore.

After years of research behind closed doors, Form Energy announced that it has developed a business model for an iron ore-based battery capable of discharging power for days at a cost that founders say is as little as one-tenth of the most common lithium batteries.

The plan is to scale the technology, taking it out of lab prototypes and proving that it works in real life.

In a market where seemingly promising solutions rarely prosper – or go bankrupt -, a little skepticism is always welcome. Yet Form has brought a major new partner into its venture: ArcelorMittal, one of the world’s largest iron ore producers, leading a new US$200 million investment round. So far, Form had raised some US$125 million from other investors, including also Singaporean Temasek investment holding.

Too heavy to power electric cars, Form’s battery may represent a turning point for one of the main problems involving renewable energy: storing large amounts of energy to power the grid when the sun doesn’t shine or the wind doesn’t blow.

Electricity systems today rely on fossil fuels such as natural gas and coal to solve the problem of intermittency – ensuring reliable and affordable power particularly at peak demand.

Lithium-ion batteries are being used by electric utilities, can store energy for shorter periods of 4 to 6 hours, and can even accommodate some fluctuations in energy supply, but do not guarantee the required system reliability.

Several solutions for intermittency are emerging: from green hydrogen to pressurized water pump batteries (resembling small hydroelectric dams) to carbon capture technologies that could, in theory, make fossil thermal plants less polluting.

The question is which of them will be price competitive.

In the United States, reducing the price of batteries has become a government mission as Joe Biden’s administration has the bold goal of decarbonizing the electricity sector by 2035. The U.S. Department of Energy has already announced that it aims to foster initiatives to reduce the cost of storage represented today by lithium batteries by up to 90%.

A recent study estimates that costs need to drop below US$50 per kilowatt-hour before utilities begin to use long-life batteries more widely, and that storage cost must drop to somewhere between US$1 and US$10 per kilowatt-hour before it becomes the dominant solution.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, one of Form’s founders Mateo Jaramillo says that the cost of storage per cell is about US$6 per KwH. A complete system of several batteries to ensure supply for more than 100 hours would cost around US$20 per KwH.

A former Tesla executive for about 7 years developing batteries, Jaramillo joined Yet-Ming Chiang, an MIT professor who co-founded A123 Systems, a lithium battery pioneer, and has been researching solutions for long-term energy storage for almost 10 years.

Broadly speaking, the way the battery works is simple. It consists of cells filled with thousands of tiny iron pellets that rust when exposed to air. When oxygen is removed, the rust is converted into iron. By controlling the process, the battery is either charged or discharged.

Aiming to find cheap ways to store energy, Form’s scientists began working in an agnostic fashion with various combinations: sulfur-iron, sulfur-air, sulfur-manganese, and iron-air – and the last alternative has proven to be the most promising.

The company’s next step is to get a large-scale pilot up and running by 2023, in a project already closed with a power generator operating in Minnesota. Jaramillo says the plan is to have “iron batteries capable of affordable long-term energy storage starting in 2025.”

Source: Reset

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