Form Energy is developing long-duration energy storage to backstop renewables. The company is based in Massachusetts, has 130 employees and was founded in 2017 by a former lead from Tesla’s stationary battery team. The company said in 2020 that it intended to deploy its first 1MW/150MWh long-duration storage system by 2023.
The technology is an iron-air battery. There is a fuel anode, which metallizes during charging (gain of electrons) and which oxidizes during discharging (loss of electrons). At the air-breathing cathode O2 gas ionizes into the solution during discharging (gain of electrons) and evolves as a gas during charging (loss of electrons).
Compared to other patent libraries we have reviewed, we found it more challenging to de-risk Form’s metal-air battery technology, as a means of providing low-cost, long-duration storage using only Earth-abundant materials. Further explanation in the data-file.