‘China is the place to be’: Enervenue deploys first nickel-hydrogen pilot, targets 1 GWh production by 2027

Things are moving fast for Enervenue and its metal-hydrogen battery storage technology. In March, the company announced its successful $300 million Series B financing round as well as the appointment of Henning Rath (formerly of German company Enpal) as CEO.

In early May, Rath spoke to ESS News, calling from Enervenue’s semi-automatic production line at its new factory in Changzhou. The next step is to get a fully automatic 250 MWh manufacturing line of its fourth-generation chemistry up and running, which Rath said will come in Q3, before scaling production up again to 1 GWh in 2027.

Days after Rath spoke to ESS News, Enervenue commissioned the first pilot project of its fourth-generation technology with Hong Kong utility Towngas.

The Towngas project features a custom AC block with 50 of Enervenue’s aqueous metal cells (AMCs) in a modular rack configuration delivering a total storage capacity of 150 kWh, with a battery management system (BMS) and inverter in a custom outdoor-rated enclosure. It has onsite renewable energy generation and electric bus charging stations.

“We are deploying more pilots in the US, Canada, Australia, Belgium, and Saudi Arabia,” said Rath. The goal is global and Enervenue wants to be involved at every stage: from manufacturing to deployment.

It doesn’t have distribution centers yet, according to Rath. Instead, it is shipping up to 40-foot containers FOB China to the job site wherever they are needed.

He said Enervenue is modeling itself after the Tesla business model, which is “fully-fledged, vertically integrated.”

Chinese manufacturing; Silicon Valley R&D

“We are planting the seed, learning how to manufacture at scale and then we will copy and paste the approach into local markets,” Rath said, adding that Changzhou is the “battery center of China” and therefore an ideal location to build its manufacturing base.

Meanwhile, Enervenue’s R&D team, based at the company’s official headquarters in California, is already working on developing the next generation of its metal-hydrogen battery technology.

“When I first started my discussions with Enervenue I said we can only be successful if we become a global business. We need to leverage the strengths of the world. I think Silicon Valley has amazing innovation power and we are leveraging this, but when it comes to fast pace, iterating manufacturing infrastructure, China is the place to be,” said Rath.

“We are geopolitically independent. Enervenue is positioned as a global business with R&D in the US, very counter-intuitive right now as a US company manufacturing in China.”

“For me, part of the purpose of life is to build bridges and not burn bridges in populism and polarization. I want to build lighthouse projects and showcase that the US and China can still work together in difficult geopolitical environments.”

Rath continued, “So, we are combining the best of both worlds: innovation from the US and creating our manufacturing footprint in China.”

“Our battery chemistry consists, basically, of three materials. We need nickel, steel, and a bit of gas fiber composite that makes the battery nearly completely recyclable, has a high residual value and is not connected to rare earths of lithium supply chains that are basically controlled by China.”

Enervenue’s roots are all-American, having started life at NASA and Stanford University. The chemistry is nickel hydrogen. Enervenue calls it the aqueous metal cell, which contains a nickel hydroxide cathode and a nickel allow anode in an alkaline electrolyte. When charged, hydrogen gas is produced and stored inside a sealed, large format cell. On discharge the hydrogen reaction is reversed. The battery has a 90% round-trip efficiency rate and can be charged and discharged 30,000 times.

Data centers

Like a lot of other nascent battery chemistry pioneers, Enervenue is targeting the data center market. “We are perfectly fitted for data center applications due to the very safe but long chemistry. We are long duration storage which means we can discharge from two to 12 hours, which is very suitable for a data center,” said Rath.

“We are also going into flow battery markets where typically other battery chemistries for LDES are applied, as well as petrochemical plants, where fire risk is obviously an issue,” he added.

Although living in China and focused on Enervenue’s future, Rath remains involved in Enpal where he was chief supply chain officer.

“I came to Enpal when we were roughly 50 people or so, very early stage. I was a managing director for the group and part of the C-level for six years so it’s still in my heart. It’s my baby and it was very difficult to leave it but I’m still on the board of Enpal and still supporting the business, just in a different capacity.”