Reliance, Bill Gates leads $144M funding in US-based Ambri Inc

Reliance New Energy Solar Ltd, a wholly-owned renewable energy unit of Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL), today announced it has joined Bill Gates and Paulson & Co. Inc, for a $144 million investment in US-based battery storage company Ambri Inc.

According to a statement, RNESL will invest $50 million in the $144 million funding round, which Ambri will use to build a manufacturing facility and commercialize its technology. With this, RNESL will be getting 42.3 million shares of preferred stock in Ambri, as stated by the company.

The upcoming investment will help Ambri in commercializing and expanding its global long-duration energy storage systems business, the statement said. The development comes as part of Ambani's Rs 75,000 crore investment in clean energy, including four Giga factories.

Ambri, which offers energy storage systems ranging from 10 megawatt-hours to more than 2 gigatonnes, will manufacture calcium and antimony electrode-based cells that can last for more than 20 years with minimal degradation and are considered more cost-effective than lithium-ion batteries.

Currently, Ambri's long-duration energy storage systems, based on patented technology that has been designed to last between 4 and 24 hours, will overcome the cost, longevity, and safety barriers associated with lithium-ion batteries used in grid-scale stationary storage applications. They will allow for a critical energy storage solution capable of supporting the increasing amounts of renewable energy being integrated into the grid.

By the year 2022, the American firm hopes to commercialize its liquid metal grid battery technology. This technology has the potential to cut costs in half when compared to lithium-ion batteries, and it also has a safety breakthrough with rugged operating performance.

RNESL and Ambri are also discussing an exclusive collaboration to establish a large-scale battery manufacturing facility in India, which could reduce costs for Reliance's green energy initiative even further.

“We are exploring new and advanced electrochemical technologies that can be used for such large-scale grid batteries to store the energy that we will create. We will collaborate with global leaders in battery technology to achieve the highest reliability for round-the-clock power availability through a combination of generation, storage, and grid connectivity,” Ambani had announced.

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