Malta has raised a $50 million Series B round to bring its super-long duration energy storage to market, the company said Wednesday.The startup spun out of Google parent company Alphabet's moonshot factory, X, in 2018. Many startups tackling energy storage breakthroughs have looked to batteries and other electrochemical devices. Malta turned instead to thermal energy: it uses grid power to compress air for storage in hot molten salts and cold antifreeze liquid. A heat engine later converts the energy back to electricity for consumption. This apparatus, in theory, allows for storing power economically on much longer timescales than is feasible with the lithium-ion batteries prevalent today. The funding news came after an extreme winter storm blacked out the Texas grid for days on end, highlighting the value of power sources that can ride through multiday shortages of natural gas or renewable generation. Swiss energy firm Proman led the Series B, joined by previous investors Alfa Laval and Bill Gates-backed Breakthrough Energy Ventures, which led Malta's $26 million Series A round in 2018. Dustin Moskovitz, co-founder of Facebook and Asana, also participated. "The commercialization process is moving along nicely," VP of Commercialization Ty Jagerson said in a Tuesday interview. "Anyone looking at 4 hours [of energy storage] is starting to look 8 to 10. The market is transitioning rapidly." Malta has already submitted bids for storage solicitations, he added, and plans to have its first commercial project online in 2024 or 2025. That timeline is driven in part by the scale of the enterprise. Malta's core plant design would charge at a rate of 185 megawatts and will be able to discharge at 100 megawatts for up to 10 hours. This industrial facility would be designed to operate for 30 years. The gap between power in and power out reflects heat losses in the conversion process, but over the last few years, the company identified a... |