ntora Energy, a Bill Gates-backed startup with a bold pitch to use blocks of solid graphite to make heat-storing batteries, announced today that it will be opening its first factory in San Jose, Calif.
like oil and natural gas. Up until a few years ago, the idea of a factory buying electricity and then converting it into heat would have been laughable—electricity was simply too expensive.energy projects at breakneck speed in recent years as the cost of those technologies drops precipitously.
The goal is for their thermal batteries to be cheaper to operate than using fossil fuels. The companyits first full-scale pilot plant at an industrial site in Fresno, Calif., last month. Justin Briggs, Antora’s co-founder and COO, says the new factory will begin producing thermal batteries next year, though Briggs was tightlipped on naming customers. He says the units are simple to make: the graphite blocks, for instance, are a cheap and common industrial material.
“There's blocks of carbon, there's insulation, there's a steel shell, there are some surrounding instrumentation, and other components,” Briggs says. “Because of that, we're able to manufacture these things quite rapidly.”