Background
Storing renewable energy has always been the issue and, like other innovations, has prompted rapid acceleration of battery development to cater for rising demand from high-energy industrial and commercial users who are now championing their transition to lower emissions and lower embedded energy production to play their part in cleaning up our local environment ultimately to achieve zero net emissions.
Energy Renaissance has been raising capital over a long period with a great team to build a lithium-ion demonstration plant in 2021 and on the back of this learning to develop Australia’s first scale battery manufacture facility (2022) at Tomago in the heart of one of NSW renewable energy precincts. With plans to build a battery cell manufacturing plant at the same location, Energy Renaissance has the scale manufacturing capacity to replace imported battery’s and plug this supply chain exposure with an Australian – owned sovereign lithium-ion battery and cell manufacture capability.
Progress
The technical details of Energy Renaissance’s innovations are not relevant here. More importantly, its evolution has been characterised by the following:
1. A long term collaboration with CSIRO to develop a high density battery architecture and remote battery management system suitable for the harsh and hot Australian climate.
2. A technology agnostic battery cell recognising that whilst lithium-ion technology is the conventional wisdom today, over time new material technologies are likely to deliver unique benefits – better storage, higher stability, faster recharge, longer durability etc.
3. Batteries that can be repurposed for household use and recycled at end of life.
4. A manufacturing facility that is highly automated, built for scale and competitive pricing.
5. An expert team, rather than a team of experts, with that mix of fund-raising connections, big-end of town commercial and manufacturing expertise, financial acumen and marketing sophistication dedicated to commercial success.
6. The capacity to invest in relationships with State and Federal Governments over several years, understanding their policy agendas and how to support them – doing what they need to do and are asked to do, and doing it right – whilst retaining a laser focus on their commercial objectives.
7. Securing access to grant funding initially from the IMCRC and then from AMGC to support research and battery manufacture pilot plant development.
8. A delivery focus, transparently communicating with their shareholders to demonstrate Milestone achievement and execution capability which sets the ongoing foundation for later round funding to finance the really big ticket manufacturing facilities.
9. A strong pipeline of industrial clients seeking locally manufactured battery storage solutions including potential export opportunities .
In the midst of all this Energy Renaissance has an active R&D program developing battery storage modules for a range of other applications with energy innovators in different sectors. Whilst not in profit, revenues are growing strongly and profitability is forecast in the next 12 months.
Triple Innovation value-add
Triple Innovation has been supporting Energy Renaissance for some time firstly with grant application support – identifying what needs to be done, working with Energy Renaissance to secure the information needed for a compelling grant application and then presenting that data including Feasibility Studies, Project Plans and Budgets in a compliant format that is easily understood to make life easy for grant assessors. And latterly working with Energy Renaissance to begin to plan how to secure Government support as it is needed given the scale-up plans they are implementing over the next 18 months.