Moonwatt secures $8.3M to dial up solar’s staying power with sodium-ion storage

The drive to decarbonize our economies through electrification and clean energy continues to generate momentum around battery technologies, as storage has a key role to play in enabling the green transition. While renewables are clean sources of energy compared to burning fossil fuels, their power output isn’t always consistent. In the case of solar — which has seen a massive rise in deployments in recent years — once the sun stops shining on the photovoltaic cells, the electricity generation gets shut off. One solution for regulating the variability of solar plants is to store energy when there’s a glut (during daylight hours). This way, the stored power can be made available at other times, including to serve periods of higher demand — which are also, typically, later in the day when there’s less sunshine around. Moonwatt, a clean tech startup founded in September last year in the Netherlands, is working on a battery-based energy storage system that’s co-located with, and optimized ... Read full article.