“Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door” is a famous epigram about innovation credited to the American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Dennis Calvert will testify to that.
“We’ve delivering a better battery, and we have the attention of the world,” says Calvert, CEO of BioLargo, Inc. “The demand for grid-scale batteries is insatiable.”
BioLargo, a publicly traded company based in Westminster, California, is known for creating and commercializing sustainable technologies to solve tough environmental and cleantech challenges.
Recently the company has begun rapidly forming joint venture partnerships with companies and nations around the world who want to be in the grid-scale battery manufacturing business.
Blame it on artificial intelligence. Blame it on carbon reduction mandates. Blame it on the accelerated adoption of renewable sources. Last September, The Economist magazine called grid scale batteries clean energy’s next trillion-dollar business opportunity.
Grid-scale batteries are large-scale energy storage systems that store electricity for use on the power grid. These batteries are designed to store energy when there is low demand or excess generation and then release it back to the grid during peak demand or when generation is low.
Cracking The Code With Innovative Tech And Generous Terms Thanks to an independent technology evaluation and a generous share-the-wealth business model, some prospects are expressing that BioLargo’s offering sounds too good to be true at first glance.
Instead of trying to tie up the technology, BioLargo is willing and able to build the factories for a fee that includes a 19% minority equity stake and a 6% royalty licensing fee. Calvert says it is a generous approach designed to spur rapid adoption.
“When we meet with prospective joint-venture partners, we begin by asking: ‘How many battery factories do you want and where do you want them?’” says Calvert.
Calvert’s announcement that a third-party evaluation has confirmed key technical advantages for its Cellinity battery technology’s use in grid-scale battery energy storage applications has generated global interest. BioLargo has already signed four Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) agreements with joint-venture partners who want to build ten factories in places such as Arizona, Norway, and Mexico. No dates for groundbreaking have been set yet.
“This third-party evaluation by the U.S. BESS Corp. is an important piece of the puzzle for our business plan to bring our Cellinity battery technology to the world through manufacturing joint ventures,” said Calvert. “We do not know of any long duration energy storage technology that can match our cell’s technical claims for cost effective performance and safety.”
U.S. BESS Corp. is a U.S.-based company that provides energy storage solutions for a wide range of applications, including utilities, microgrids and defense. Its independent evaluation concluded that it is reasonable to claim that the BioLargo cell would not experience any thermal runaway, materials of construction are commonly available and can be domestically sourced, the cell does not contain any rare earth elements and cell components are fully recyclable.
The Challenges Holding The Market Back While lithium-ion batteries currently dominate the market, they present known challenges: fire risks from thermal runaway, efficiency losses over time, and supply chain sourcing constraints related to rare and critical minerals.
“Lithium has a number of problems,” says Calvert. “We always said the explosive nature of lithium is number one, but there is also the thermal runaway fire risk, when one cell ignites another cell and so on in a daisy chain. That explosion and fire risk are why they take your lithium batteries when you get on an airplane.”
Calvert says their business model is pretty simple: Give more than you take.
“This is important because it allows us to actually record revenue as we enter into the build phase, and then we participate in the equity that’s created in the cash flow that’s created post build as a minority equity holder and a royalty for the license of the execution of that factory,” says Calvert.
The kicker to the deal is that the key cell ingredient is not supply chain problematic.
“There is supply chain insecurity for certain batteries that use earth-scarce materials like lithium and rare-earth metals like cobalt, meaning there are only a few global sources of those things and sometimes they’re not in places that are geopolitically stable or even friendly with the United States,” says Calvert.
Among other chemicals, sodium chloride (table salt) is one of the primary ingredients in the BioLargo cell.
“Sodium chloride makes up over 3% of ocean water and is therefore in endless supply,” said Calvert. “The other chemicals are as abundant and readily available from numerous sources throughout the United States.”
Sodium batteries are not a new technology. Sodium-sulfur cells have been in existence for over 80 years, which have medium energy density and low to medium power density. They were pioneered by Ford Motor Company in the 1960s.
“Our battery is basically a cousin of the type of molten salt batteries developed in the middle of the 20th century,” said Calvert. “It evolved from those molten salt batteries, but it has a much higher energy density because of the special nature of the invention and advancements in material science.”
The Cellinity cell is not a sodium-sulfur cell. Although it does contain both sodium and sulfur, these elements do not play a significant role in the energy density of the cell. The Cellinity chemistry was invented by scientists at the University of Tennessee over a 10-year R&D effort.
Another challenge facing battery energy storage systems is that capital costs will likely rise because of President Trump’s import tariffs, since much of the technology used in current systems comes from places like China. So, there might be a slowdown for technology providers that have a lot of exposure to the tariffs.
“Thankfully for us, our battery really is designed to minimize the number of parts and materials that come from abroad, so in a tariff-heavy world, technically we’ll have an advantage over other battery providers,” said Calvert. “Ideally, it is our plan to have our batteries fully manufactured in the U.S. with all domestic supply materials.”
Calvert’s Role In Enabling Innovative Technology In recognition of BioLargo’s innovation in cleantech, Calvert was appointed as a member of the Environmental Technology Trade Advisory Committee serving the Secretary of Commerce, and Chairman of the Enabling Innovative Technology subcommittee.
“I am very interested in hearing from company leaders about the impact from current policy for both short-term and long-term impacts and I encourage them to connect with me on LinkedIn to start a conversation,” said Calvert.
Calvert says BioLargo is offering more than just better batteries. His company is offering a strategy for infrastructure, energy independence and economic revitalization.
“We are not just building batteries,” says Calvert. “We are building America’s and the world’s energy future.”
Henry DeVries is the author of 20 books and is the publisher and editor-in-chief of Indie Books International in Oceanside, California.
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