Bankability of Long Duration Energy Storage (LDES) Companies

Key Takeaways

The author has evaluated the bankability (profitableness) of leading LDES original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) using two criteria: financial performance and field deployment record.

In this issue, Invinity emerges top in financial performance among publicly-listed pure play LDES OEMs. The honors go to NGK in the field deployment criterion. These companies demonstrate strong potential for long-term growth and profitability.

LDES Market

In the recent past, dozens of companies have been founded to commercialize various long duration energy storage (LDES) technologies. These are storage technologies that can deliver 10+ hours of discharge at rated power more cost effectively than the dominant lithium-ion battery technology. The LDES space is a crowded field and each competitor is vying for a position at the podium. To a developer, investor, technology enthusiast or even an original equipment manufacturer (OEM), the billion-dollar question is: which OEM will survive the valley of death of innovation? In other words, which is the most bankable OEM? Consider this article an update towards getting to the billion-dollar answer.

It is well known that the technological struggle will be won in the market. Technological superiority counts for little if the product cannot compete in the market. As such, financial metrics are critical in assessing the competitiveness of a product/technology. In this January 2025 issue, the author has introduced an additional competitiveness metric for LDES OEMs. The new metric is field deployment, i.e, the number of units in operation under real-world conditions.

Companies to watch

For the financial metric, the author has selected LDES OEMs based on:

1. Listing (public vs private): the author selected publicly listed companies since public companies are mandated by law to disclose their financial performance.

2. Structure (pure play vs conglomerate): the author selected pure play energy storage companies since conglomerates do not tend to specify the financial performances of their energy storage subsidiaries/divisions.

For the field deployment metric, the author has evaluated LDES OEMs irrespective of company type. The criteria used here is:

1. Cumulative installed capacity: must exceed 1 MWh

2. Number of distinct installation sites: must exceed 1

The list of companies in the June 2024 issue was as follows: Energy Vault Holdings, Inc. (“Energy Vault“); Eos Energy Enterprises, Inc. (“Eos“); ESS Tech, Inc. (“ESS“); Invinity Energy Systems plc (“Invinity”) and Redflow Limited (“Redflow“).

In this January 2025 issue, the list has been updated as follows:

• Additions

  • Private companies with significant field deployed capacities: Enerox GmbH (CellCube) and VRB Energy

  • Conglomerates with significant deployed capacities: NGK Insulators Ltd (“NGK“), Largo Inc. (“Largo“) and Sumitomo Electric Industries, Ltd. (“Sumitomo Electric“)

• Exclusions

  • Energy Vault: the company is no longer considered a pure play LDES company and does not meet deployment criteria

  • Redflow: the company entered voluntary administration in August 2024

As such, the company list in this January 2025 issue contains the following 8 entries (in ascending alphabetic order):

• CellCube

• Eos

• ESS

• Invinity

• NGK/BASF

• Rongke Power

• Sumitomo Electric

• VRB Energy

Some notable LDES OEMs such as Form Energy were not included herein due to their lack of operational pilot and commercial projects.

Additionally, the following top LDES providers did not meet the authors deployment threshold detailed above: Antora, Energy Dome, Energy Vault, Form Energy, Highview Power and Largo.

More on this in the field deployment section herein.

HY 2024 Financial performance

Three of the selected companies are publicly listed and have disclosed their half-year 2024 financial performance. The companies HY reports are linked in the table below. See further financial details in this LDES Tracker.

Net profit margin = (net income/revenue)*100; a measure of how much profit is generated as a percentage of the revenue.

Field deployment

The table below displays the deployed capacities by 7 companies across both pilot and commercial projects. See full project details in this LDES Tracker.

Additionally, the following notable LDES OEMs were not included in the table above because they did not meet the deployment threshold:

• Antora: 1 operational pilot project rated 5 MWh

• Energy Dome: 1 operational pilot project rated 4 MWh

• Energy Vault: 1 operational commercial gravitational energy storage project rated 100 MWh

• Eos: no publicly available deployment records

• Form Energy: no operational projects

• Highview Power: 1 operational pilot project rated 15 MWh

• Largo: 1 operational commercial project rated 5.5 MWh

The LDES Tracker contains further details of all the projects listed above.

Author’s take

Among the publicly listed pure LDES OEMs, Invinity demonstrates highest financial strength with a net loss margin of ~696% YoY. However, Eos’s net income grew fastest at 52% YoY.

From a deployment viewpoint, NGK/BASF has a huge lead at 5 GWh, almost 1000 times that of ESS. NGK’s large installed capacity is reflective of the company’s long deployment history which stretches back to 2001!

The author notes that this article should be used for information purposes only. Comprehensive bankability reports can be obtained from renowned technical due diligence firms such as DNV. Feel free to reach out with any questions and feedback.