Ambrosia Energy to build 10 GWh battery factory in Texas for off-grid data centers
US startup Ambrosia Energy has begun work on a battery factory near Austin, Texas. The company aims to power data centers with solar and batteries at $100 per megawatt-hour.
Ambrosia Energy, a US startup building solar-plus-battery power plants for data centers, has started work on a 10 gigawatt-hour battery factory near Austin, Texas. Co-founder and CEO Ben Longmier announced it on Tuesday on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco. The project matters because the company wants to offer data centers power that competes with the natural gas turbines many large operators plan to use.
The factory and timeline
The factory will cover 150,000 square feet, and Longmier said full production is expected in two to three years. Its output would allow the company to build about 300 megawatts of power plant capacity per year at its field sites.
Ambrosia emerged from stealth in June, aiming to build data center power plants at $100 per megawatt-hour. Longmier and co-founder Sara Spangelo chose solar plus batteries as the cheapest and fastest option to deploy. Solar panels power the load by day and charge the batteries, which discharge at night and on cloudy days so the data center runs around the clock. The pair previously founded satellite constellation startup Swarm, which they sold to SpaceX.
First plant and costs
Later this year, Ambrosia will begin work on its first commercial power plant in West Texas. It will pair 300 megawatts of solar panels with 660 megawatt-hours of batteries to deliver 30 megawatts of continuous power, targeting 99.3% uptime. Longmier said that even with overbuilt solar and storage, the company can be profitable at $100 per megawatt-hour.
Sections of the pilot-scale plant have run continuously for more than 100 days; the pilot can generate 200 kilowatts around the clock. To cut costs, the company has simplified components, including solar mounts and battery packs, and makes many parts in-house. Longmier said Ambrosia buys existing cells and builds its own packs with about 100 times fewer parts than any competitor he has seen, reaching roughly 1.3 times the cost of the bare cell versus 5 to 7 times for most stationary storage systems.
