Effective battery storage technology is expensive but would be vital to the future of renewable energy sources, such as sun and wind. Because the wind doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow, some have hoped that battery technology could be the solution to decrease intermittancy issues.
Alevo is the world’s first utility-scale storage company. They were founded in 2014 and are based n Concord, NC, just outside of Charlotte. I was confused when I toured their facility, because it was over 2 million square feet. The building used to be operated by Phillip Morris until 2009. At its height, the tobacco giant was churning out over a billion cigarettes a year. Before Alevo acquired the building in 2014, the Hunger Games had been filmed there.
I spoke with Jeff Gates, Alevo’s VP of Business Development for the company. We discussed safety issues associated with Lithium Ion batteries, which Alevo has solved thanks to its unique “Alevolyte” technology. We also discussed some lessons learned from Jeff’s earlier days at Duke Energy, which were referenced in our first episode.
On the business front, we discussed how rising prices of lithium could affect growth, and how Alevo’s own in-house software division is pushing the case for storage technology on the grid.