Eos Energy Storage, the startup that’s attracted utility interest from around the world in its low-cost, zinc-based batteries, is raising money to build more of them, and to get those units out in the field. Deployments are needed to prove the company’s bold claims of multi-hour, long-lasting energy storage at a cost of $160 per kilowatt-hour.
On Tuesday, Eos announced the initial closing of a sale in a private placement of approximately $23 million. The New York-based startup previously raised $23 million in May 2015 in a round led by AltEnergy, and about $27 million in two previous funding rounds from investors including OCI, NRG Energy and Fisher Brothers.
The money will fund the scale-up of contract manufacturing and commercial deployment of its Eos Aurora batteries. These cargo-container-sized, 1-megawatt, 4-megawatt-hour units use cathodes made from zinc, a much cheaper metal than lithium, but one that’s proven to be a challenge for rechargeable batteries.
Eos says it’s solved these problems through a proprietary coating that reduces corrosion over multiple charge-discharge cycles, as well as other materials and design improvements, to yield a battery with 75 percent round-trip efficiency and a 10,000-cycle, or 30-year, lifetime.
As for price, the company has long been targeting $160 per kilowatt-hour, which is about half the cost of the cheapest lithium-ion batteries on the market — although lithium-ion’s massive manufacturing base is sure to drive down those prices in the years to come.
Eos’ batteries sacrifice round-trip efficiency in comparison to lithium-ion, which is in the 90 percent range. But they have a better profile for multi-hour discharge cycles, particularly in the 4- to 6-hour range, where lithium-ion batteries really struggle.
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