Battery industry veterans are coming together to launch Peak Energy, which aims to mass-produce batteries to cover fluctuations in renewable energy sources, like wind and solar power generators.
Because Peak Energy is focused on scaling up production of battery technology that already exists, they don't think of themselves as a traditional"startup." Peak Energy launched in June and is coming out of stealth on Wednesday, announcing a $10 million funding round lead byfor more than five years, where he was responsible for battery, motor and electronics manufacturing and then led global manufacturing. Also joining the funding raise is"The No. 1 issue we face as it relates to expanding renewable energy sources is storage," Reichow told CNBC.
That's no small feat. It takes between $50 million and $100 million per gigawatt to build a battery factory, and a 30-gigawatt factory would employ between 2,000 and 3,000 people and be between 1 and 2 million square feet, Mossburg told CNBC. Peak Energy will make individual battery cells, about the size of a loaf of bread, says Dales. Then those loaf of bread battery cells get wired together to make modules, which would be about the size of a filing cabinet. Then those filing cabinets will be assembled into a battery the size of the back of a tractor trailer truck, then deployed near a solar or wind farm, 50 to 100 at a time.