[PRESS RELEASE] Climate tech startup AQUABATTERY, and Museon-Omniversum, an impact-driven museum, announce their partnership during ImpactFest on November 7th in the Hague.
Press Release: AQUABATTERY opens new office, manufacturing and R&D facility in Alphen aan den Rijn ahead of launching seed investment round.
On April 20th, we opened our new office, R&D and manufacturing facility in Alphen aan den Rijn. The new facility is going to be instrumental for AQUABATTERY, a battery innovator, to build the world’s most sustainable, safe and affordable long duration energy storage (LDES) in order to enable a 100% renewable power system.
The new facility opening also marks the launching of a seed investment campaign to support the climate tech company’s product development and commercialization plans until 2025.
The facility in Alphen aan den Rijn has tripled the previous floor area for R&D and manufacturing activities, and doubled the office area for operational activities. AQUABATTERY is expecting to produce 10 large scale systems with a total capacity of 5MWh until 2025. Currently the company employs thirteen colleagues and plan to recruit for seven new employees across various technical and commercial roles in the coming year. At the opening ceremony, Gert van den Ham, alderman for Energy and Sustainability at the Municipality of Alphen expressed his delight to welcome the company and underlined the urgent need for batteries to solve grid congestion.
Jiajun Cen, CEO and co-founder, says that AQUABATTERY’s novel flow-type saltwater technology “offers a sustainable, safe and affordable alternative to polluting mainstream batteries”. Specifically, AQUABATTERY is suitable to store energy for 8-100hrs, which is crucial to absorb excess solar and wind generation in times of sunny or windy days, and discharge green electricity when there is not enough renewable production.
In addition to make a 100% renewable grid possible, AQUABATTERY’s saltwater technology “does not rely on critical raw materials, for example cobalt or lithium, to build large-scale batteries”, Emil Goosen, COO and co-founder added. It uses locally available, abundant and environmentally friendly materials such as table salt and water, which are reusable at the end of life. Therefore, AQUABATTERY contributes to a sustainable and secure battery value chain for the Netherlands and Europe’s energy security and resilience.
Kees van de Kerk, the chairman of Flow Batteries Europe, a technology association, also mentioned at the opening that sustainable energy storage systems such as those produced by AQUABATTERY are essential to manage the imbalance between energy production and consumption. Using these batteries in many cases is also cheaper than expanding the grid.
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AQUABATTERY was founded in 2014 and is one of the top100 most innovative SME in the Netherlands according to the Dutch Chamber of Commerce in 2021. The company is short-listed for the ‘Battery Innovation Award’ at the World Energy Storage Exhibition and Forum to be held on May 9th in Rotterdam. AQUABATTERY is also supported by the European Innovation Council and partners from TU Delft, Imperial College London, Pure Water Group and Wetsus European Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Water Technology.
