A TechCrunch analysis of a $1 billion project that Form Energy is working on with Google and regional utility Xcel Energy to produce 30 gigawatt-hours of battery energy at a data center in Minnesota suggests the all-in capital cost for the batteries is approximately $33.33 per kilowatt-hour. Form Energy said five years ago that it expects the cost to drop to $20 per kWh.
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“The numbers I’ve seen for lithium-ion in a packaged form is around $100 per kWh,” he said. If Form Energy can offer a battery that discharges at $50 per kWh, “that could really be competitive. That means for that same application, to get 100 hours of energy you could spend $100 per kWh and do lithium-ion or you could spend $50, half as much, and get the same performance for that very slow discharge rate.”
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The project that Form Energy is working on with Google and Xcel, to help power one of the tech giant’s data centers, in Pine Island, Minnesota, would be the world’s largest battery.
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“The new plant in Minnesota will be big enough to deliver 300 megawatts of power and store an enormous 30 gigawatt-hours of energy, making it the largest battery by capacity that’s been announced so far,” a Fast Company article says. “By comparison, that’s more storage than all of the battery projects built in the U.S. in 2024 added together.”
The Google-funded battery plant would help Xcel cover new demand created by the data center by providing 1,900 MW of new clean energy: 1,400 MW from wind, 200 MW from solar and 300 MW from the battery system.
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Iron-air batteries are sometimes referred to as rust batteries because they convert the natural rusting process of iron metal into energy using what’s called reversible rusting. As air enters into a battery cell containing an electrolyte and iron and air electrodes, oxygen converts the iron metal into rust, releasing energy. When an electrical current is introduced into the cell, the rust converts back to iron, releasing oxygen and storing energy. Repeating the process creates a durable source of energy, according to a Form Energy information page.
Damn, that is pretty huge. I think it's still too expensive to make large scale solar into a firm energy source, but it would certainly make it more viable.
Damn, that is pretty huge. I think it's still too expensive to make large scale solar into a firm energy source, but it would certainly make it more viable.
I've been casually following Form Energy for about 10 years now. Really cool to see them taking on such a huge project. I feel like electrochemical storage without rare earth metals has huge...
I've been casually following Form Energy for about 10 years now. Really cool to see them taking on such a huge project. I feel like electrochemical storage without rare earth metals has huge potential for the grid! I think other projects that use compressed gases and similar physical processes to store energy are awesome (even things like using molten salt storage with heat engines), but it's hard to beat the simplicity of non-moving storage approaches like batteries from a maintenance and reliability stand point.
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Damn, that is pretty huge. I think it's still too expensive to make large scale solar into a firm energy source, but it would certainly make it more viable.
I've been casually following Form Energy for about 10 years now. Really cool to see them taking on such a huge project. I feel like electrochemical storage without rare earth metals has huge potential for the grid! I think other projects that use compressed gases and similar physical processes to store energy are awesome (even things like using molten salt storage with heat engines), but it's hard to beat the simplicity of non-moving storage approaches like batteries from a maintenance and reliability stand point.