GE Energy Financial Services joins Cadent Energy Partners and prior investors Polaris Ventures and Rockport Capital, for the new round of financing, under the GE Ecomagination Challenge’s Powering the Grid program, in which SustainX is a partner.
SustainX has received a total of $5.4m earlier financing from the Small Business Innovation Research program of the National Science Foundation and from the Energy Storage Program of the US Department of Energy.
AES Energy Storage is working with SustainX to demonstrate a full-size system in the field, capable of storing enough energy to power 1,000 typical US homes.
The investment is based partly on GE Global Research’s evaluation of SustainX’s technology.
To store energy, SustainX compresses air by using electricity to drive pistons inside cylinders and the resulting high-pressure air is stored in above-ground vessels.
To release energy later, the system uses stored air to drive the same pistons, which in turn drive an electric generator.
SustainX technology keeps air at a nearly constant temperature during compression and expansion, this significantly improves efficiency and reduces the cost of compressed-air energy storage below that of other above-ground energy-storage options.
