Announced via both press releases and the company's own blog, Energy Dome has been awarded $11 million in a convertible round led by Capital Sgr and Barclays. The new cash influx will allow Energy Dome to seek more equipment to build a state-of-the-art facility dedicated to storing renewable energy on the grid utilizing a carbon dioxide battery, the first of its kind in the industry.
Launched in early June, Energy Dome's initial construct built in Sardinia, Italy, uses off-the-shelf equipment in order to allow for a more swift and painless process of deployment, which the firm states is now possible without any potential issues getting in the way. It appears from the outside much like Chernobyl's New Safe Containment layer, a massive white dome that houses a special thermodynamic process that allows for high-density energy to be safely stored.
Energy Dome explains that the concept can be utilized with both solar and wind renewable energy sources. The Sardinia location was picked primarily for its industrial locale and already existing electrical energy connection, which currently runs on coal. This fossil fuel, however, will be phased out of the area by 2025, making Energy Dome's investment in Sardinia a rather intriguing prospect.
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Beyond its existing CO2 battery in Sardinia, Energy Dome has already written up plans with the likes of both A2A and Ansaldo Energia to deliver its platform on a variety of fronts. For A2A, an Italian utility firm, Energy Dome, signed a commercial agreement for the construction of a 20 MW-5h facility, the first of its kind. Additionally, the company signed a nonexclusive agreement with Ansaldo Energia to deliver long-term energy storage containers for the firm's various plants in Germany, Italy, Africa, and the Middle East.
In an interview with Bloomberg, Energy Dome explained how exactly their technology works by citing it as "a new process that has never been done before." The concept is essentially "based on the principle of storing energy with pressure and heat, which is used in biogas plants." Energy Dome then charges the battery by compressing carbon dioxide "at near atmospheric temperature and pressure." This heat accrued during this process is thus stored, and the utilized "CO2 gas becomes a liquid."
"To generate and dispatch electricity, the liquid CO2 is heated up and converted back into a gas that powers a turbine, which generates power. The CO2 gas is always contained and the entire system is sealed."
The team goes on to explain that they "don't use any exotic materials" in its process, and all that is necessary for the process to work smoothly is "steel, CO2, and water." Thus, rare earth materials are not necessary for the technology underpinning Energy Dome, ensuring that it remains "geopolitically independent" and "can be produced everywhere." The company has two videos on its YouTube channel dissecting the nature of its CO2 battery and the process by which its technology functions.
Thus far, Energy Dome has raised a whopping $25 million since its inception in February 2020. In that time span, it has evolved from a mere proof of concept to multi-megawatt testing capabilities and is now setting its sights on improvements, global reach, and enhanced funding. Energy Dome plans to have a Series B round set for late 2022.
