ESS Inc. has installed a new chief executive as the company, now firmly in commercialization mode, faces the critical challenge of convincing grid players to deploy its batteries for long-duration energy storage.
Eric Dresselhuys is in as CEO at the 10-year-old Wilsonville company, taking the role that had been held by founder Craig Evans.
Evans will stay on as president, ESS said in a news release, leading “several key functional areas … helping to accelerate the next-generation of product advancements.”
Dresselhuys was a co-founder and longtime executive at Silver Spring Networks, a smart metering and grid networking company.
“His decades-long commitment to a clean energy future aligns perfectly with the mission of ESS,” Michael Niggli, chairman of the board at ESS, said in a statement. “He has proven his ability to leverage breakthrough technologies to transform the energy industry and we look forward to seeing his leadership and vision shape our path forward.”
Silver Spring was founded in 2002 and went public in 2013. Dresselhuys was executive vice president for global development when he left the company in 2017, just before it was acquired by rival Irton in an $830 million deal.
He takes over a company that is fighting to make inroads in a market dominated by lithium-ion batteries with what’s called a flow battery.
Broadly speaking, it’s not a new technology, and has long been touted for an ability to deliver longer-duration storage than lithium-ion batteries. But flow batteries have been slow to commercialize.
ESS says its iron-based-electrolyte version is a less expensive, safer version than other flow batteries, and is the right fit as renewable energy developers and utilities look for six, eight or 10 hours or more of output.
Dresselhuys called the ESS battery “a truly breakthrough solution.”
ESS has around 100 employees. It closed a $30 million Series C round in late 2019 and has been investing heavily in automated manufacturing in Wilsonville. The company recently unveiled a new utility-scale product using what it termed "second-generation" tech.
Although no major deployments have been announced, company executives recently told the Business Journal several are coming soon, including one to a California utility to provide resiliency when wildfire threats shut down portions of the grid.
