Sign In or Create an Account.

By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy

Sparks

The Coolest Thing in Climate Tech Just Got More Buyers

Rondo Energy is taking its hot rock batteries on the road.

A Rondo heat battery.
Heatmap Illustration/Rondo

Rondo Energy, a Silicon Valley startup building “heat batteries” to replace fossil fuels in heavy industries, announced three new customers on Wednesday. In just a few months' time, the company has gone from serving a single industry — ethanol — at its pilot plant in California, to making deals around the globe that demonstrate the technology’s potential versatility.

With grant funding from Breakthrough Energy Catalyst, as well as the European Investment Bank, the company will install three commercial-scale batteries at factories in Denmark, Germany, and Portugal. Each one will prove Rondo's compatibility with a different industry: In Denmark, the battery will be used to produce low-carbon biogas. In Germany, it will power a Covestro chemical plant that produces polymers. In Portugal, it will power a to-be-announced food and beverage factory.

Rondo warms up literal tons of bricks to more than 1,000 degrees Celsius (more than 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit) using electric heaters powered by renewable energy. The bricks can retain the heat for up to 18 hours, my colleague Katie Brigham reported earlier this year. When the heat is needed, air flows through the system and releases energy as either hot air or steam. At the site in Denmark, for instance, the battery will generate high pressure steam to drive a turbine generator, delivering steady heat and power to the plant. Rondo sells the energy as a service, retaining ownership and control of the equipment.

The projects announced Wednesday follow a series of recent deals across a diverse list of industries: a cement plant in Thailand, a plastic recycling plant in Texas, and even whiskey — Diageo will use the tech to electrify its Bulleit Bourbon plant in Kentucky. The fast fashion giant H&M is exploring use of the tech, and the company has also announced partnerships with the renewable energy developer EDP as well as Saudi Aramco.

As Katie noted in her piece, there are a lot of technologies competing to solve the challenge of producing industrial-grade heat. Carbon capture and storage equipment can be added to existing fossil fuel boilers, or natural gas and coal can be replaced with clean hydrogen fuel. There are also industrial heat pumps that can produce lower-temperature heat. But all of these solutions have the same challenge — overcoming the “green premium” compared with the fossil fuel boilers and furnaces used today.

Just because Rondo has made inroads in some industries, doesn’t mean all its potential customers are ready or able to fork over that green premium today. That’s why, in addition to being an investor in Rondo, Breakthrough Energy Catalyst decided to provide grant funding to these three new deployments, said Mario Fernandez, the head of the Catalyst program. The hope is these projects will help bring down the cost and catalyze greater adoption.

Green

You’re out of free articles.

Subscribe today to experience Heatmap’s expert analysis 
of climate change, clean energy, and sustainability.
To continue reading
Create a free account or sign in to unlock more free articles.
or
Please enter an email address
By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy
Sparks

The Trump Administration Helped a Solar Farm

In the name of “energy dominance,” no less.

Solar panels.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

The Trump administration just did something surprising: It paved the way for a transmission line to a solar energy project.

On Friday, the Bureau of Land Management approved the Gen-Tie transmission line and associated facilities for the Sapphire Solar project, a solar farm sited on private lands in Riverside County, California, that will provide an estimated 117 megawatts to the Southern California Public Power Authority.

Keep reading...Show less
Green
Sparks

These 21 House Republicans Want to Preserve Energy Tax Credits

For those keeping score, that’s three more than wanted to preserve them last year.

The Capitol.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Those who drew hope from the letter 18 House Republicans sent to Speaker Mike Johnson last August calling for the preservation of energy tax credits under the Inflation Reduction Act must be jubilant this morning. On Sunday, 21 House Republicans sent a similar letter to House Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith. Those with sharp eyes will have noticed: That’s three more people than signed the letter last time, indicating that this is a coalition with teeth.

As Heatmap reported in the aftermath of November’s election, four of the original signatories were out of a job as of January, meaning that the new letter features a total of seven new recruits. So who are they?

Keep reading...Show less
Green
Sparks

The Country’s Largest Power Markets Are Getting More Gas

Three companies are joining forces to add at least a gigawatt of new generation by 2029. The question is whether they can actually do it.

Natural gas pipelines.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Two of the biggest electricity markets in the country — the 13-state PJM Interconnection, which spans the Mid-Atlantic and the Midwest, and ERCOT, which covers nearly all of Texas — want more natural gas. Both are projecting immense increases in electricity demand thanks to data centers and electrification. And both have had bouts of market weirdness and dysfunction, with ERCOT experiencing spiky prices and even blackouts during extreme weather and PJM making enormous payouts largely to gas and coal operators to lock in their “capacity,” i.e. their ability to provide power when most needed.

Now a trio of companies, including the independent power producer NRG, the turbine manufacturer GE Vernova, and a subsidiary of the construction firm Kiewit Corporation, are teaming up with a plan to bring gas-powered plants to PJM and ERCOT, the companies announced today.

The three companies said that the new joint venture “will work to advance four projects totaling over 5 gigawatts” of natural gas combined cycle plants to the two power markets, with over a gigawatt coming by 2029. The companies said that they could eventually build 10 to 15 gigawatts “and expand to other areas across the U.S.”

So far, PJM and Texas’ call for new gas has been more widely heard than answered. The power producer Calpine said last year that it would look into developing more gas in PJM, but actual investment announcements have been scarce, although at least one gas plant scheduled to close has said it would stay open.

So far, across the country, planned new additions to the grid are still overwhelmingly solar and battery storage, according to the Energy Information Administration, whose data shows some 63 gigawatts of planned capacity scheduled to be added this year, with more than half being solar and over 80% being storage.

Keep reading...Show less
Yellow