Form Energy set to build world’s biggest battery in Maine

The Maine installation marks the first time that Form has chosen to develop its own project instead of contracting with a utility customer, and not coincidentally, it’s the most ambitious so far.

“This is a very natural next step in terms of scaling up and deployments,” Jaramillo said, adding that it’s actually not a huge outlier compared with other projects Form is working on but hasn’t yet publicized: ​“There will be other utility projects that get announced that are the same size or larger.”

New England’s grid could use the help. The region has limited supplies of fossil gas, thanks in part to environmental attitudes in neighboring New York, which has blocked new pipelines. This hasn’t reduced New England’s appetite for electricity and heating fuel, but did force the region to supply itself with liquefied natural gas imports. Unfortunately, the century-old protectionist law called the Jones Act makes it prohibitively expensive to ship in cheap American gas, so New England has the pleasure of competing on the tight global market. (Form published a study last year on how its tech would help in these market conditions.)

That gas stress becomes especially risky in the winter, because home heating gets first dibs on the fuel. When a cold spell strikes, and gas runs low, power plants switch to burning oil, which sets back the region’s ambitious commitments to reduce its climate-altering emissions. The region’s independent system operator, which runs the grid, has modeled likely scenarios in which the grid could run out of power for extended periods of time, and there are a lot of ways that could happen.

The Lincoln project could help by guaranteeing a long-term power supply in a corner of the region that is stretched thin for power supply relative to demand. The battery can pitch in during daily peaks as well as go into extreme weather events loaded up for 100 hours of continuous discharge. Normally, a modern American grid would use gas as the backstop for such events, but given the regional limitations, it pays to have on-demand power that doesn’t rely on that fuel.

Now that the federal money has been committed, Form needs to finalize a lease with the town, engage locally for permits, and file for interconnection to the grid. Once the paperwork is done, Form expects to employ 100 workers for construction and then five to 10 for long-term operations. The company is targeting a 2028 completion, ​“if not sooner,” Jaramillo said.

In those permitting discussions, Form has a big advantage: Its batteries’ core ingredients are iron and water, so they can’t catch on fire or blow up in the way lithium-ion batteries occasionally do. The fire risk has complicated some battery developments near population centers in the Northeast, but that shouldn’t apply in this instance.