Antora Energy Selected by ARPA-E for $14.5 Million Award to Accelerate Launch of Heat & Power Product
June 25 2024 - 1:05PM
Business Wire
ARPA-E’s SCALEUP Funding Paves the Way for
Gigaton-Scale Industrial Decarbonization Impact
Antora Energy, a leader in zero-emissions industrial heat and
power, has been selected by the Department of Energy’s Advanced
Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) to begin award
negotiations for up to $14.5 million to accelerate the launch of
Antora’s combined heat and power thermal battery product. Building
on prior support from ARPA-E, this capital through the Seeding
Critical Advances for Leading Energy technologies with Untapped
Potential (SCALEUP) program unlocks commercial-scale manufacturing
for Antora’s pioneering heat-to-power technology and paves the way
for gigaton-scale decarbonization impact in the industrial
sector.
Over the past five years, Antora, supported by ARPA-E, has
transformed thermophotovoltaic (TPV) technology into a reliable,
scalable, and simple solution to convert heat to electricity with
no moving parts—a job historically handled by complex and costly
turbomachinery. Antora has demonstrated breakthrough
heat-to-electric conversion efficiency and opened the world’s first
dedicated manufacturing line for TPV. These advances open a path to
rapidly manufacture Antora’s combined heat and power product in
U.S. manufacturing facilities with a U.S.-based supply chain.
As part of the SCALEUP award, Antora will work to ensure that
its combined heat and power product fully addresses the needs of
industrial and utility customers. Antora will partner with Con
Edison, the utility that serves New York City and Westchester
County, to help meet its ambitious clean heat and power goals for
New Yorkers. In addition, Antora has signed a letter of intent with
Shell to evaluate potential opportunities to deploy the product in
industrial processes such as chemicals production.
“ARPA-E’s ongoing support has put Antora on a rapid path to
electrify industry in the United States and beyond,” said Andrew
Ponec, co-founder and CEO, Antora Energy. “By soaking up
ultra-cheap renewable electricity, thermal batteries are already
the lowest-cost way to deliver industrial heat. Turning that heat
into cheap and reliable electricity requires a better heat engine
than has ever existed, and that’s exactly what Antora has achieved
with our heat-to-power TPV technology. This transformative funding
from ARPA-E enables us to expand our TPV manufacturing capacity and
accelerate the launch of Antora’s combined heat and power
product.”
“Through an ARPA-E program focused on long duration energy
storage to increase utilization of renewable generation assets,
Antora Energy developed, manufactured, and tested a novel
thermophotovoltaic cell with high efficiency for a thermal
battery,” said ARPA-E Director Evelyn N. Wang. “Now, through
SCALEUP, the company will ramp up its production, enabling the
cost-effective production of solid-state heat engines to supply
both high quality heat and power. I look forward to following
Antora Energy’s progress as they work to decarbonize our American
industrial sector.”
Antora leverages renewable electricity to heat blocks of solid
carbon—a low-cost, earth-abundant, and safe storage medium that’s
used extensively across industries—to glowing hot temperatures in
an insulated battery module. The stored heat is then reliably
delivered at the scale and temperatures that large industrial
operations demand, or can be converted directly into electricity
using Antora’s TPV technology—unlocking the dual heat and power
output needed to completely replace the fossil fuels used in
today’s manufacturing processes for sectors like food &
beverage, paper products, chemicals, steel, and cement.
This funding comes on the heels of Antora’s $150 million Series
B, announced in February of this year. Antora is actively ramping
up production of its first product, a factory-made thermal battery
that outputs industrial process heat, to deliver billions of
dollars of zero-emissions energy to industrial customers.
To learn more about Antora Energy, visit www.antoraenergy.com
and follow the company on LinkedIn and Twitter.
About Antora Energy
Antora Energy is unlocking zero-emissions industrial heat and
power, cheaper than fossil fuels. Antora’s thermal batteries
convert low-cost, intermittent renewable electricity into reliable
industrial energy. Factory-built in the United States, Antora’s
modular thermal batteries output electricity and heat at
temperatures hot enough to address the hardest-to-decarbonize
industrial applications. Antora’s products will decarbonize global
industry while supporting U.S. jobs, spurring American
manufacturing, and strengthening domestic supply chains. The
company is backed by leading investors, including Decarbonization
Partners, Trust Ventures, Lowercarbon Capital, Breakthrough Energy
Ventures, Emerson Collective, The Nature Conservancy, BHP Ventures,
Grok Ventures, GS Futures, Overture VC, and a subsidiary of NextEra
Energy Resources, LLC.
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Media: Megan Nealon on behalf of Antora Energy V2
Communications antora@V2comms.com