Fusion energy company Helion is making big plans for the north Puget Sound region after a $500 million fundraise.
The startup, which is focused on making zero-carbon electricity, is in the process of moving from Redmond to Everett, where it plans to build its seventh-generation fusion generator, Polaris. Helion broke ground on the facility to house the generator in July and expects the facility to be complete early next year, after which it will start building the generator, according to co-founder and CEO David Kirtley. In addition to the generator, Kirtley said the company plans to have a manufacturing facility where it can make specialized parts for its generators.
"What we found in the years of building all these fusion prototypes is a lot of what we do is pretty specialized. While there are off-the-shelf component makers or custom component makers around the world that can supply what we've done for previous systems, at the scale we're doing and the speed we're trying to move, really we have to do it in house," Kirtley told the Business Journal.
The majority of the company is still in Redmond, where the company's sixth-generation generator is housed, but some employees are in Everett helping build the new facility. Helion hopes to have Polaris up and running in 2024, Kirtley said, after which the generator can hit net electricity production, meaning the generator produces more power than it consumes. The manufacturing facility, which the company is leasing, will be right next to the Polaris facility, which will be 25,000 square feet, Kirtley said.
In addition to the $500 million the company raised, Helion can secure an additional $1.7 billion from investors if it reaches key milestones. Kirtley said a major milestone is getting Polaris running and hitting net electricity production, which will essentially mean Helion's fusion technology is ready for commercial deployment.
Fusion energy requires an immense amount of heat. Reaching that heat — and creating a facility to withstand the heat — is a major challenge with fusion energy. According to the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, nuclear fusion reactors reach 150 million degrees Celsius, which is 10 times hotter than the center of the sun.
Helion announced in June it was the first private fusion company to heat fusion plasma to 100 million degrees Celsius. Kirtley said its process is more efficient than others, making the 100-million-degree mark sufficient. The company has hired engineers and scientists who can create a facility that can house that kind of heat, he said.
The company currently has 63 employees but plans to be around 130 by 2024, according to Kirtley.
One fusion system is about 40 feet long and 6 feet tall. To go from a demonstration that the technology works to using it to change the power grid, Kirtley said Helion uses modern components and can create mass manufacturing lines.
"We believe that allows us to go very quickly from one system to many systems," Kirtley said.
