Noon Energy, a developer of ultra-low-cost battery technology for long-duration energy storage, has closed a $3 million seed stage investment. Prime Impact Fund led the round and was joined by At One Ventures, Collaborative Fund and Xplorer Capital.
Today's widely used batteries store energy in relatively expensive metals such as lithium, cobalt and vanadium. In contrast, Noon's battery stores energy in the ultra-low-cost elements carbon and oxygen — storage media that cost well below $1 per kilowatt hour of capacity, less than the cost of their containers. It does this at double the round-trip energy efficiency of hydrogen.
“Long duration storage is the missing link to a fully renewable electric grid,” said Dick Swanson, founder of SunPower, and director on Noon's board. “This is a difficult challenge because storage times must be increased from the four hours typical of today's batteries to 100 hours or more.”
