Google announced earlier this week that it was Building a new data center in Minnesota It will be powered by a mix of wind, solar and a very unique battery built by the startup form energy Which is capable of discharging for several days.
Now we know the price of that feat of electrochemical engineering: about $1 billion, According For information.
Farm Energy’s giant iron-air battery is capable of delivering 300 megawatts of continuous power for more than 100 hours. It works by breathing, in a sense – oxygen pumped into the cells rusts the iron, which releases electrons. The battery will work to smooth the flow of electrons from 1.4 GW of wind power and 200 MW of solar power.
The startup has been working on the technology for years, and has built a factory in West Virginia to produce the batteries. But until this recent deal with Google, it had not found any big customer.
With a large order on the books, Farm Energy CEO Mateo Jaramillo said his company is in the process of raising $500 million. According to PitchBook, Form has raised $1.4 billion to date. The company plans to go public next year.
