Nothing screams of the traditional fossil fuel economy like a coal mine. Now, Westlake Village-based Energy Vault Holdings Inc. is helping to take a coal mine slated for shutdown in Sardinia off the Italian coast and lay the infrastructure to turn that mine into an energy storage system to facilitate the use of renewable power.
This is the latest of several developments at Energy Vault over the past couple of months, including the activation of a battery storage system in Texas, internal organizational moves and a quarterly earnings release that disappointed investors.
The energy storage project in the closing coal mine – announced Aug. 5 – is in partnership with Sardinian coal company Carbosulcis. It will combine centuries-old pumped-water energy storage technology – in which water is moved from a lower reservoir to an upper reservoir to store energy and back down to release it – with Energy Vault’s gravity-energy storage system that involves raising and lowering massive blocks to store and then release energy. This would allow the converted coal mine to store and release on call up to 100 megawatts of energy generated from renewable sources.
For Energy Vault, which has been deploying its gravity-based storage technology in China and other locales around the globe, this is the first time the technology is being applied in an underground setting.
“We believe that this exciting application of our energy storage solutions, including a new use for our gravity energy storage technology – deploying it underground – could hold vast potential for future applications,” said Marco Terruzin, Energy Vault’s chief commercial and product officer.
Construction on the energy storage project is set to begin next month, with the system scheduled for testing next year. The coal mine itself is slated for complete shutdown by the end of 2026.
Neither the cost of the combined energy storage system nor the financial details of Energy Vault’s arrangement with Carbosulcis were disclosed.
Just as work is getting under way on this project, work on another Energy Vault energy storage project has wrapped up.
On July 24, Energy Vault announced that a 100-megawatt battery energy unit it helped develop near Fort Stockton, Texas, has begun commercial operation. Austin, Texas-based energy storage company Jupiter Power, a subsidiary of New York-based BlackRock Asset Management, is the lead developer of the project, known as the St. Gall Battery Energy Storage System.
Energy Vault served as the engineering, procurement, construction and commissioning contractor and system integrator for the project and will deliver the second battery energy storage system for the overall project.
On the organizational front, Energy Vault announced July 25 that it has hired Wes Fuller as the new head of global sales, charged with expanding Energy Vault’s global footprint. The company also announced unspecified cuts that would save up to $8 million a year.
Finally, on Aug. 6, Energy Vault released quarterly earnings that were disappointing for investors.
The company reported a loss of $26.2 million in the second quarter, matching the loss for the same period a year earlier. The cuts announced last month were not in effect during the second quarter.
Just as concerning for investors, revenue fell sharply to $3.78 million for the second quarter from $39.6 million for the same period last year.
On Aug. 7, the first trading session after the earnings release, Energy Vault’s share price plunged 14% to 87 cents. The share price drifted down a bit further in subsequent days, closing on Aug. 13 at 84 cents.
