Moment Energy raises $40 million to meet ‘unlimited power demand’ with EV batteries

Moment Energy CEO Edward Chiang believes North America’s electricity needs are limitless and his startup has the solution.

The company, which is headquartered in Canada and the United States, is taking a novel approach to reusing electric vehicle batteries, Chiang told TechCrunch. He said the company’s approach is special because of its dual focus on safety and modularity.

Investors apparently agree. On Tuesday, Moment Energy announced it had raised $40 million in a Series B funding round, bringing total funding to more than $100 million. The round was led by Canadian VC firm Evok Innovations, with additional funding from grocery retailer fund W23, joining existing investors including Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund and CIA-backed VC firm In-Q-Tel.

In Chen’s view, North America’s power grid is losing the race to keep up with this demand due to increasingly extreme weather, the rise of electric vehicles and the data center boom. So far, this demand has mainly been met by Chinese companies, which represent about 72% of the global market, according to BNEF, but poses a threat to national security, he said.

Moment Energy is tackling this problem by taking the battery pack from an electric vehicle, removing the automaker’s battery management system, and creating its own software to manage the pack. Battery modules can then be packaged into large grid-scale storage solutions that can host a variety of battery chemistries, allowing customers to benefit from future technology advances while also reducing downtime if a particular module fails.

Importantly, Moment Energy does all this with UL certification and is the first company to reuse batteries with the safety organization’s approval, Chiang said.

Chen said other companies working to reuse EV batteries for long-term storage often claim to have tested their products against UL certification standards, but in fact do not have certifications that require the use of specific components.

“Most other second lives are [battery] “Companies are now trying to say, let’s make it easier to get UL certification for second life because it’s impossible to get UL certification right now. But right now we’re saying that’s not true,” he said. Understood. ”

Although UL certification may sound boring, Chen said it could change not only safety, but also how energy storage products are insured.

He argued (without naming names) that other energy storage companies would leave automakers’ battery management systems intact on reused batteries, essentially fooling companies into thinking they were on their way to inducing the right amount of discharge.

This can make these storage solutions uninsurable or too expensive to insure, Chiang said. He cited Liberty Mutual’s investment arm’s participation in Moment Energy’s Series B as evidence of the superiority of the company’s solutions.

“I think that’s interesting, maybe as an engineer or as a consumer,” he said. “The reality is, fire inspectors don’t think it’s interesting. Car manufacturers don’t think it’s interesting either. If you can imagine, and I really hope something like this never happens, but if a battery catches fire, the fire inspectors don’t think it’s interesting. They’ll say, ‘Hey, here’s Tesla’s battery management system, or here’s Nissan’s battery management system,’ and the automaker will say, ‘I’ve never allowed anyone to hack and bootleg my safety systems.’

Chiang Kai-shek’s confidence seems to come from a variety of sources. Although Moment Energy is small, with about 72 employees, the company has supply contracts with Mercedes-Benz and Nissan, Chen said. Secured a $20 million loan from the Department of Energy. And it’s building a gigawatt-scale factory in Austin, Texas.

Moment also has a growing and diverse customer base, from utilities to industrial companies to data centers.

But Chen also said he believes much of Moment Energy’s approach stems from the fact that it is essentially a Canadian company, distancing itself from Silicon Valley’s most despicable impulses.

“All the data center companies have contacted us,” Chiang said, but he also emphasized that the company does not want to be trapped by raising money against promises it cannot fulfill.

“What we’ve really been thinking about overall is staying focused overall on what we know, what we’re building, and serving real customers, rather than trying to sign a five-, 10-year contract just to get funding. And unfortunately, we’re seeing a lot of Bay Area startups not really putting as much effort into delivering their product, but they’re trying to get their next round of funding,” he said.

“But for us, because of our Canadian roots, I think a lot of Canadian companies are focused on building not just high-growth businesses, but tangible businesses, actually profitable businesses. And we’re pretty pragmatic when it comes to deployment.”

This article has been updated to reflect that the investment arm of Liberty Mutual participated in the funding round.