Clean energy sources like solar and wind are low-cost and plentiful. But they are subject to the whims of Mother Nature; it’s not always sunny and windy.
Palo Alto startup Noon Energy Inc. says it has created a way to store this type of mercurial energy, and on Wednesday the company announced it had raised a $28 million Series A to commercialize its technology. The funding round was led by Clean Energy Ventures and Aramco Ventures. The new investment follows a $3 million seed round that was raised in March 2021.
Noon Energy created a battery that offers long-term storage of energy using natural elements — in carbon and oxygen — instead of in metals, like lithium and cobalt. The goal of its battery is to make solar and wind power available year-round.
The 5-year-old company claims its battery offers “100-plus hours storage at 10 times a lower cost and 3 times a higher energy density than today’s lithium-ion batteries,” according to a press release.
As a proof of concept, core components of Noon Energy's technology are being used on NASA's Perseverance rover, which is nearly two years into its exploration of the planet Mars. The tech is specifically being used in the rover's Moxie device — formally known as the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment — which is exploring the production of oxygen on the planet.
Noon Energy founder and CEO Chris Graves helped develop this technology. “Our carbon battery stores energy by splitting CO2, similar to how nature stores energy by photosynthesis,” Graves said in the release, which aded that the company plans to bring its battery to market in two years, according to the release.
