Ambrosia Energy begins construction of 10 GWh battery factory in Texas — TechCrunch

Startup Ambrosia Energy has begun work on a 10 GWh battery manufacturing plant near Austin, Texas. The facility is expected to enable the company to build energy projects of around 300 MW annually at its sites, TechCrunch reports.

Production plans

The factory will cover 150,000 square feet. Ambrosia Energy co-founder and CEO Ben Longmire said the company plans to reach full production capacity within two to three years.

The startup, which emerged from stealth mode in June, is developing power plants for data centers with a stated electricity cost of $100 per MWh. The concept combines solar panels and batteries: during the day, the panels power the load and charge storage systems, while at night and in cloudy weather, the batteries keep the data centers operating.

Longmire and the company’s co-founder, Sara Spangelo, previously founded satellite constellation startup Swarm, which they sold to SpaceX.

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First commercial facility

Later this year, Ambrosia also plans to begin work on its first commercial power plant in West Texas. It will combine 300 MW of solar panels with 660 MWh of batteries to continuously supply 30 MW of electricity. The facility’s target uptime is 99.3%.

According to Longmire, the company expects to be profitable at an electricity price of $100 per MWh even with additional solar panels and batteries installed for continuous operation. He believes this will allow it to compete with gas turbines that major data center operators plan to use for power supply.

Parts of Ambrosia’s pilot power plant have been operating continuously for more than 100 days, Longmire said. The pilot installation can generate 200 kW of electricity around the clock. To reduce costs, the startup is simplifying mounts for solar panels and battery modules, reducing the number of components and manufacturing some equipment in-house.