Energy Vault and Atlas Renewable Break Ground on EVx Deployment in China

Energy storage leader Energy Vault Holdings announced the groundbreaking for the first EVx deployment in China.

The 100 MWh gravity-based EVx system is being developed next to a wind farm and national grid site in Rudong, Jiangsu Province located outside of Shanghai to augment and balance China’s national energy grid through the delivery of renewable energy to the State Grid Corporation of China (SGCC). 

Energy Vault and Atlas Renewable agreed to a $50 million licensing deal for the utilization of Energy Vault’s proprietary gravity-based energy storage technology and its technology-agnostic energy management and asset optimization software suite in the Chinese power market. 

The agreement also consists of terms governing volume-based deployment royalties and covers maintenance, monitoring, and the beneficial re-use of waste materials within Energy Vault’s composite blocks.

The payment of the $50 million licensing fee is scheduled to be completed in 2022.

The project is the first utility-scale gravity-based storage deployment between a U.S. and a Chinese company and was approved by the local city government and provincial government with support from the central government agencies within the People's Republic of China.

“Our first commercial EVx deployment in China is a significant milestone for Energy Vault and for the People’s Republic of China as it pursues its decarbonization goals,” said Robert Piconi, Chairman, Co-Founder and CEO, Energy Vault. “China is rapidly expanding its use of renewable energy coupled with annual energy storage mandates in order to meet its decarbonization goals. We are very pleased that EVx and our Energy Management Software Platform have already received local regulatory endorsement and is being deployed now as a critical enabling technology to support China’s energy transition and carbon neutrality goals. In 2021, China produced more metric tons of greenhouse gasses than the next four largest countries combined, and as currently planned, will continue to increase emissions until 2030. We must move swiftly to reverse this trend, and together with local partners China Tianying and Atlas Renewable, we will do just that.”