East Bay industrial battery maker Rondo Energy raises $60 million

Alameda-based Rondo Energy has raised $60 million to expedite the rollout of its heat energy batteries powered by wind and solar electricity, the company announced Wednesday.

The strategic round funded by Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Energy Impact Partners, SCG, TITAN, as well as Microsoft's Climate Innovation Fund, Rio Tinto, SABIC, Aramco Ventures, climate investors SDCL Energy Efficiency Income Trust and noted venture capitalist John Doerr, marks $82 million in funding to date. Last year, the company raised $22 million in Series A funding.

Along with funding, Rio Tinto, Aramco Ventures, SABIC, SCG, TITAN, and SEEIT have joined Rondo's Strategic Investor Advisory Board.

The new capital will enable Rondo to expand its global operations and continue the development of storage projects worldwide.

The Rondo Heat Battery converts renewable electricity from solar or wind sources into heat energy, supplying continuous industrial heat or steam when needed at temperatures up to 1,500°C. The aim is to tap into the excess renewable energy often produced during the day and address the substantial carbon emissions associated with industrial activities.

“To tackle our climate challenge, we need tools to build big, low-cost, clean energy infrastructure fast,” said John O'Donnell, CEO of Rondo Energy in the press release. “This investment will help us grow our capacity to meet customer demand and begin to build at scale.”

A spokesperson for Rondo Energy said the three-year-old company — which was founded in 2020 in Oakland and in 2022 shifted its headquarters to Alameda — is rapidly growing, expanding its team from 40 to 90 people this year with a “healthy pipeline of projects around the world.”

Customers can either purchase the heat battery technology outright, giving them ownership and control over both the battery and any on-site renewable generation, or opt for a "heat as a service" approach, where Rondo Energy or a third party owns and manages the system, and customers pay for the heat produced based on usage.

Rondo Energy says it has developed two deployable models, with one having a typical daily output of 480 megawatt-hours. For comparison, average annual electricity consumption for a U.S. home was 10.6 megawatt-hours in 2021, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration.

While the company would not disclose specific pricing, a spokesperson for Rondo Energy said the energy from the batteries is cost competitive or cheaper compared to fossil fuel gas in most parts of the world and five to 10 times cheaper than an equivalent lithium-ion solution.

In June, the company announced plans to expand production capacity for their batteries in Thailand at Siam Cement Group's plant from 2.4 GWh to 90 GWh per year, making it the largest battery manufacturing factory globally.

In March, the company launched its first commercial operation of the battery at biofuel refinery Calgren Renewable Fuels in the Central Valley town of Pixley. At Calgren, the battery replaces fossil fuel combustion with heat from renewable electricity in refining processes, decreasing production costs and carbon intensity in biofuels.

Rondo Energy is in the process of deploying another project involving a 130 megawatt-per-hour system, which is being built off the grid and will rely entirely on solar power. This project is expected to come online in the first half of 2024, a spokesperson said.