Peak Energy President and Chief Commercial Officer Cameron Dales (left) and Peak Energy CEO Landon Mossberg go hiking in the company’s early days. The Colorado mountains in the background are where the company name, Peak Energy, comes from.
Photo courtesy of Peak Energy
Battery industry veterans gather for launch peak energywhich aims to mass produce giant batteries to smooth out production fluctuations from renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power.
Peak Energy doesn’t consider itself a traditional “startup” because it’s focused on scaling up production of existing battery technology.
“A typical Silicon Valley startup works in a lab for 10 years, comes up with a better mousetrap, and brings it to market. We’re just the opposite.” cameron dalesPeak Energy’s president and chief commercial officer told CNBC in a video interview Friday.
Peak Energy would like to partner with a technology company (not yet selected) that is already an expert in battery technology but does not have the capacity to scale up manufacturing.
“It turns out that in the battery market, the rarest commodity is not technology – there are many good ideas in academic labs and startups – but rather the ability to scale up to manufacturing,” the CEO said. Ta. landon mossberg he told CNBC. “Difficulty scaling up manufacturing is one reason why we see so many announcements of ‘breakthrough battery technology’ but so few companies actually bring it to market.”
Founded in June, Peak Energy is coming out of stealth on Wednesday, announcing a $10 million funding round led by: Greg Reichow in solar eclipse, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm. Prior to joining Eclipse, Reichow worked for the following companies: tesla For more than five years he was responsible for manufacturing batteries, motors and electronics before leading global manufacturing. In addition, those who participate in fundraising are: TDK Venturesthe corporate venture capital arm of a multinational electronics company headquartered in Tokyo. TDK.
“The biggest issue we face as it relates to expanding renewable energy sources is storage,” Reichow told CNBC. “This problem must be solved, but existing approaches using lithium-ion and other technologies have not yet reached the price levels that will enable the kind of expansion that society needs across sectors. .”
Demand for grid-scale storage will continue to grow.of U.S. Energy Information Administration projected it Battery capacity will increase from 9 GW in 2022 to 49 GW in 2030, and further to 247 GW in 2050. This is a baseline forecast that includes the Inflation Control Act and assumes no additional changes to U.S. policy over the forecast period.
(Left to right) Ryan Gibson, Eclipse Venture Partner. Landon Mossberg, CEO of Peak Energy. His Eclipse partner Aidan Madigan-Curtis and his Peak Energy president and chief commercial officer Cameron Dales in protective gear in a battery factory clean room.
Photo courtesy of Peak Energy
A stacked team with aggressive growth goals
Peak Energy is still in its early stages. The company has approximately 10 employees and an office in San Francisco.
But its workforce will triple in the coming months, and Peak Energy expects to have its first prototype battery in 2024, using batteries sourced from third parties to combine individual batteries into larger systems. We are aiming to build a system. Peak says it will “produce twice as many batteries” by 2030. We offer multi-gigawatt quantities of battery cells for proprietary battery systems and other applications.
It’s never easy. Mossberg told CNBC that battery factories cost between $50 million and $100 million per gigawatt to build, and a 30 gigawatt factory would employ 2,000 to 3,000 people and be between 1 million and 2 million square feet. He said it would be.
This is an aggressive and expensive expansion plan, but Mossberg has previously demonstrated this type of rapid production scale-up. north boltis a battery manufacturing company founded in Sweden in 2016. Northvolt was founded by peter carlsonMr. Mossberg served as global head of procurement and supply chain at Tesla from 2011 to 2015, and Mr. Mossberg joined in 2017. After 18 months, Northvolt had grown from 300 employees to 4,000 by the time Mossberg retired four years later.
Cameron Dales and U.S. Congressman Ro Khanna at the Enovix battery factory in Fremont, California in 2021.
Photo by Cameron Dales
Of course, Peak Energy would need to raise more money to fund this type of expansion. A lot more.
”We are executing on the strategy that myself and the rest of the management team first demonstrated and deployed at Northvolt,” Mossberg told CNBC.Northvolt also started with a small seed round, and Mossberg was involved in securing all of that funding, ultimately raising more than $9 billion in equity. Excludes the latest $1.2 billion announced in August.
Dales has had a similar experience. He was an early employee and co-founder of Symyx Technologies’ equipment business Symyx Tools, a materials science innovation company. Listed in 1999joined a battery company in 2009 enobix.
“I naively thought, ‘How hard can a battery be? It’s just pluses and minuses. Everyone has Duracell. How hard can it be?’ 14 years later, I’m still there. Little did I know,” Dales told CNBC. Enovix manufactured very high energy density batteries at its battery factory in Fremont, California. Another one under construction in Penang, Malaysia.The company went public in a certain year. SPAC deals of $1 billion or more in 2021.
“Peak Energy’s team is comprised of two veteran industry leaders who have previously scaled battery companies.” Anil Achuuta, who led the investment in TDK Venturessaid in a written statement shared with CNBC.
The same goes for Eclipse.
“Landon and I worked together at Tesla and I know what he’s capable of accomplishing,” Reichow told CNBC. “After leaving Tesla, he started a battery company as an executive at Northvolt. Similarly, Cam was a core member of Enovix’s founding team and helped build the business. These are executives with a proven track record of building.” Companies are tackling the most difficult areas, and that’s what makes them unique. ”
Why Peak Energy focuses on sodium ions
Peak Energy focuses on manufacturing large-scale sodium-ion battery systems for use with wind and solar energy production facilities. Large grid-scale batteries can capture energy generated from renewable sources, hold that energy, and transmit it later when the wind isn’t blowing or the sun isn’t shining.
Dales said Peak Energy will manufacture individual battery cells that are about the size of a loaf of bread. Next, wire up the battery cells in these pans to create modules. The module will be about the size of a file cabinet. These filing cabinets are then assembled into batteries about the size of the back of a tractor-trailer truck and deployed 50 to 100 at a time near a solar or wind farm.
Mossberg told CNBC that 100 blocks would provide power to 62,500 homes for four hours.
Artist rendering of the Peak Energy battery system.
Rendering provided by Peak Energy.
The most typical battery technology today is lithium-ion, which is used in mobile phones and electric cars and is highly valued for its energy density. Sodium-ion batteries have low energy density and are heavy, which has negative implications for mobile devices and automobiles, but is less relevant when it comes to grid-scale batteries.
“In stationary energy storage systems, weight, and therefore energy density, is not as important. The fact that these batteries have a lower energy density is really not a big consideration in this application,” Reichow told CNBC. .
Cost is an issue when you’re talking about storing large amounts of energy.
“A much more important consideration is the cost per unit of energy that can be stored, and we believe that sodium ion will have a significant advantage over lithium ion in the future,” Reichow told CNBC.
Although it is too early for Peak Energy to commit to specific pricing for the battery system; tesla megapack battery system Without it, the cost would be about $1.3 million, but Mossberg said he believes Peak Energy’s system would cost about half that.
Additionally, lithium-ion batteries are a fire hazard. Dales told CNBC that electric vehicle manufacturers are eating up all available supply. The problem the utilities have is that “the moment Ford or GM needs more batteries, the lithium-ion contract is basically terminated and the supplier just takes the cars. Because that’s the biggest market today,” Dales told CNBC.
Additionally, China currently dominates the battery market and supply chain. “They have an overwhelming advantage in batteries in general, and they’re huge in terms of battery production,” Mossberg told CNBC. “And they’re going to do the same thing with sodium.”
Alan Thomas, Peak Energy’s head of manufacturing engineering, stands inside a battery production machine.
Photo courtesy of Peak Energy
Mossberg believes it is in the world’s interest for the U.S. and China to continue trading, and says Peak Energy is willing to work with Chinese partners, but is wary of relying completely on China. There are also geopolitical risks involved. Peak Energy’s U.S. manufacturing plans have geopolitical advantages, he said. (It’s also more climate-friendly to make these giant batteries in the U.S. than to make them in China and ship them to the U.S.)
“We don’t want to end up in a situation where critical components of the energy infrastructure of the entire economy (batteries are increasingly becoming such) are sourced primarily from parties that may or may not be friends,” Mossberg said. he told CNBC. “If the United States wants to maintain a strong economy, especially one that can manufacture things like cars and high-tech products, it is difficult to cede an entire industry of this magnitude to another player, whether it’s China. Deaf or deaf doesn’t matter. Anyone else is a dangerous prospect.”
Dales said the world’s first true giant battery factory was the Tesla/Panasonic Gigafactory in Nevada, which Reichou led in its development. The second generation is “definitely” the factory that Mossberg built with Northvolt and Dales helped build Enovix, Dales said. Peak Energy is “taking that learning and the people who developed the plant and we’re pursuing a third-generation plant design,” Dales told CNBC.
