Down to Earth: start-up backed by Hong Kong tycoon Peter Lee aims to commercialise battery technology used in space

EnerVenue, co-founded by the family office of Hong Kong tycoon Peter Lee, aims to build factories in the US and China to commercialise an old battery technology deployed in space
It can be used in power grids to manage intermittent renewable electricity production, and act as backup power for industrial, commercial and residential buildings

Business of climate change

Eric Ng

Published: 8:30am, 5 Apr 2024

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EnerVenue, a rechargeable batteries start-up co-founded by Full Vision Capital, the family office of Hong Kong tycoon Peter Lee Ka-kit, aims to build multiple plants in the US and China to commercialise an old battery technology deployed in outer space for use here on Earth.

The California-based company has developed processes to lower the total life-cycle costs of energy storage systems based on nickel and hydrogen that were used for decades in extreme aerospace conditions, so that they can compete with existing products, said Alan Chan Ying-lung, managing partner at Full Vision, which has incubated six low-carbon energy ventures now worth more than US$6.8 billion.

Down on Earth, the technology’s possible applications include solar photovoltaic, wind energy, rechargeable piles and power grids.

“The cost of our systems will be very competitive to the existing utility-scale energy storage products in the world,” Chan said on the sidelines of the One Earth Summit, a sustainability conference in Hong Kong, on March 25. “On a life cycle basis, EnerVenue’s storage is cheaper than the lithium-ion battery, and has superior durability, safety, versatility and sustainability.”

Alan Chan Ying-lung, seen at the One Earth Summit Hong Kong in March 2024. Photo: Jonathan Wong

The start-up’s product can be charged and discharged 30,000 times without rest for 30 years, Chan said. It is fireproof, operable between minus 40 and 50 degrees Celsius and is 90 per cent recyclable.

Global energy storage investment was estimated to have surpassed US$35 billion last year, up from US$20 billion in 2022 and mostly deployed in power grids, according to the International Energy Agency.

The two main applications for high-capacity energy storage today are electric vehicles batteries and utility-scale systems. The latter – which is where EnerVenue is focused – are used in power grids to manage intermittent renewable electricity production, and act as backup power for industrial, commercial and residential buildings.

Peter Lee Ka-kit, the billionaire founder of EnerVenue investor Full Vision Capital, is also co-chairman of property conglomerate Henderson Land. Photo: Handout

The nickel-hydrogen system being developed by EnerVenue competes with other grid storage technologies, such as lithium-ion, sodium sulphur, flow batteries and hydro pump, which stores energy by pumping water from a reservoir to another one at a higher elevation.

Lithium-ion batteries, which have a much higher energy density than nickel-hydrogen ones, have seen the fastest growth in commercial usage. Nickel-hydrogen batteries’ long lifespan and stability, however, mean they have been favoured for decades in satellites and other space applications.

Chan said EnerVenue is building its first 1 gigawatt-hour (GWh) energy storage factory in Changzhou, Jiangsu province, which is expected to be completed by early next year. He said the company plans to build 5 to 10GWh of capacity in China and the US, but declined to disclose the investment and time frame.

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In 2021, Hong Kong and China Gas – known as Towngas, the city’s dominant piped gas supplier and a major natural gas distributor in mainland China – won an agreement to be an exclusive distributor of EnerVenue’s products in China. Towngas, where Chan is chief investment officer, is a minority shareholder of EnerVenue.

A year ago, EnerVenue announced that it will build its first 1 GWh factory in the US, on a 73-acre site – the size of 55 football fields – in the state of Kentucky, which will house design, manufacturing and testing facilities.

Subsequent phases of expansion, supported by generous local government tax incentives, could see the company increase its output capacity to over 20 GWh per year, at a total investment cost of over US$1 billion. EnerVenue had over 7GWh of customer commitments, it said at the time.

In late 2021, EnerVenue, co-founded by Stanford University materials science and engineering professor Cui Yi and Lee’s Full Vision, completed US$125 million of series A financing.

The round of fundraising was led by Texan oilfield services firm Schlumberger and drew investment from oil behemoth Saudi Aramco, Beijing-based investment firm IDG Capital, and Full Vision, to fund battery research, marketing and production scale-up in China and in the US.

“Back in 2018, we sat down with professor Cui in Stanford University to talk about the next generation of batteries,” Chan said. “He told us there is a solution, and then he and my team wrote on a piece of paper the intellectual properties involved, how the company will work and we formed EnerVenue with just five people.”

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