Georgia Power Co. is working with battery technology company Form Energy Inc. to scale up a multiday energy storage technology that the utility believes could one day revolutionize the power sector.

First disclosed in Georgia Power's recently filed 20-year integrated resource plan, the collaboration could result in up to 15 MW/1,500 MWh of iron-air energy storage systems located in the Southern Co. utility's service territory. Georgia Power plans to follow up with greater details in a request to state energy regulators for approval.

"This particular project with Georgia Power would be sort of that very next step in the process," Form Energy CEO Mateo Jaramillo said in a Feb. 9 interview. "Obviously, it's important to get beyond just a small pilot and start to move into the commercial demonstrations, and that's exactly what this is intended to be."

Form Energy plans to debut its technology at the 1-MW/150-MWh Cambridge Energy Storage Project in Minnesota for Great River Energy by the end of 2023, followed shortly thereafter by the upscaled initiative with Georgia Power.

"But there are many other conversations that we're in the middle of that take us through the subsequent steps," Jaramillo said.

The collaboration comes as utilities and independent transmission system operators explore the need for long-duration energy storage to help integrate growing volumes of variable renewable energy resources into grid operations. Investors in recent years have bet billions of dollars on a variety of approaches to saving electricity for days, weeks and months at a time.

Today's lithium-ion battery stations typically store energy for just a few hours.

Strategic partnership

Based in Massachusetts with an engineering site in Berkeley, Calif., and a production facility near Pittsburgh, Form Energy has raised more than $360 million to date, including from European steel giant ArcelorMittal SA and Breakthrough Energy Ventures LLC, a firm founded by billionaire investor Bill Gates.

Southern, through its work with investment firm Energy Impact Partners LP, is also a strategic financial backer of Form Energy.

As Georgia Power's resource mix shifts, "it is foreseeable that system needs could eventually shift towards long-duration or multiday storage applications," the utility said in its Jan. 31 IRP filing. Technologies still need additional testing, monitoring and demonstration, the utility added.

"Ultimately, these types of technologies could provide an economic and reliable avenue to reduce reliance on fossil fuel-based generating resources while supporting renewable growth," Georgia Power said. "When these technologies mature, they have the potential to fundamentally alter the energy landscape."

Form Energy said its Georgia Power project is capable of storing electricity for 100 hours at system costs competitive with legacy power plants and at less than one-tenth the cost of lithium-ion batteries.

While lithium-ion batteries are winning projects for up to eight hours, most recently in California, Jaramillo, a former executive on Tesla Inc.'s energy storage team, does not see that early lead holding as longer durations become necessary.

"Lithium ion, even if it gets as cheap as we think it will ... still is not cheap enough to be able to carry a load for multiple days," Jaramillo said.