Exclusive: Cache Energy's mysterious white pellets could help kill coal and natural gas

by with No Comment Tech

Thick smoke is billowing out of the chimney of a Chinese factory.

Image Credits: Christian Petersen-Clausen / Getty Images

Wind and solar power have become so cheap to install, and at times so abundant, that utilities don’t know what to do with it all. Sometimes they’ll even pay the owners of other power plants not to generate electricity.

In response, scientists and engineers have been racing to find inexpensive ways to store that power for later, ultimately hoping to store renewable energy so that it’s available 24/7 and at a price that’ll put coal and natural gas out of business.

Cache Energy is the latest startup to attempt the feat, and it’s taking a slightly different tack than most. Rather than store power as heat using sand or specially made bricks, Cache is storing it in chemical bonds inside pellets made of lime derived from limestone. Founder and CEO Arpit Dwivedi likes to call the approach “coal without consequences.”

“It’s a low-cost solid that is able to produce heat and can use some of the similar infrastructure built around fossil fuel,” he told TechCrunch.

Dwivedi said that the pellets can be stored in piles or silos, moved around using conveyor belts and transported via rail cars. “As long as you physically contain it — it could literally be a tarp — that is enough to hold its charge almost forever.”

Cache Energy's pellets sit in a barrel.
Cache Energy’s pellets can be stored in simple containers without losing charge.
Image Credits: Cache Energy

Cache has been operating stealthily until now. Dwivedi started the company in 2021, shortly before finishing his PhD at the University of Illinois, and he gave TechCrunch an exclusive look at Cache’s technology, which seeks to replace fossil fuel’s role in providing heat to homes and industries.

The startup begins with calcium hydroxide, a widely available material that’s used in everything from paper making and sewage treatment to pickling and nixtamalization, the process that turns cornmeal into masa for tortillas. On its own, calcium hydroxide is a powdery substance, which isn’t ideal for Cache’s process. If the granule size is too small, it’s liable to blow away, so the company figured out how to bind the powder so it holds up over time. 

But the pellets can’t be too large, either, or they’ll stymie the next step in the process: the reaction that stores and releases energy. “We iterated a lot on the size,” Dwivedi said.

When Cache’s pellets are heated, they give off water vapor, leaving behind calcium oxide, or quicklime. That’s the “charged” state for the battery. To discharge, Cache feeds the pellets through the same gravity-fed reactor, suffusing them with moisture to reverse the reaction and produce heat. The overall efficiency of the system is around 95%, Dwivedi said.

Cache’s pellets can produce heat at up to 550 degrees C, which would cover the bulk of industrial processes as well as the heat and hot water needs of commercial and residential buildings. Dwivedi said one shipping container worth of Cache’s pellets would be enough to get a couple office buildings through the winter. The company is working on a new version that will be able to generate heat at up to 900 degrees C, widening the range of industries it can sell to.

The startup recently raised $8.5 million in seed funding, and it’s looking to raise a Series A by the end of the year. Investors in the seed round include Cantos, Climate Capital, Evergreen Climate Innovations, Grantham Foundation, Halliburton Labs, Muus Climate Partners, Unshackled Ventures and Voyager Ventures. The startup has one pilot reactor that’s currently with a customer, and Dwivedi said future funds would go toward shipping more reactors to customers.

Cache’s goal is to keep the costs of its equipment and materials as low as possible. It’s using as many off-the-shelf parts as possible, and even at its current hourly production rate of about 500 kilowatt-hours, the pellets themselves only cost about 20 to 40 cents per kilowatt-hour.

Whether Cache can be competitive with fossil fuels depends heavily on how much electricity costs. Where wind and solar are plentiful, the pellets could be charged on the cheap. Like any arbitrage opportunity, the key is to buy as low as possible.

If Cache’s pellets can withstand the rigors of real-world use, it’s possible to envision them being charged in regions where solar and wind are plentiful, like Texas or Arizona, and shipped around the country to help run industrial facilities or heat office buildings. “Even a basement of a house, if needed, can host and store it,” Dwivedi said. Imagine a Cache truck delivering pellets before the start of every winter, just like heating oil trucks still do in the Northeast. It could go a long way toward decarbonizing heat, one of fossil fuel’s last bastions.

Update: Added Cantos as an investor.

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo

White House proposes up to $8.5B to fund Intel’s domestic chip manufacturing

by with No Comment Tech

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo

Image Credits: Joshua Roberts / Getty Images

Well before President Joe Biden signed the CHIPS and Science Act into law back in August 2022, Intel has been a cornerstone of U.S. efforts to increase domestic chip manufacturing. This morning, the White House announced an agreement with the Department of Commerce that would deliver the silicon giant up to $8.5 billion to shore up U.S.-based production.

The CHIPS Act can be seen as a direct result of a number of pressing geopolitical issues. The first is the supply chain bottleneck that has been an ongoing issue since Asia was hit hard by the earliest days of the pandemic. The second is the simmering tension between the U.S. and China that reached a fever pitch under the previous administration and has continued to simmer under the current.

Asia — specifically Taiwan — continues to produce the lion’s share of the world’s semiconductors. Between the densely populated East Asian country’s semiconductor behemoth TSMC and the massive amount of manufacturing that happens in Chinese cities like Shenzhen, major industries ranging from smartphones to automotive were brought to a virtual standstill amid early lockdowns.

The above, coupled with long-standing efforts to revitalize U.S. industry, spurred on economic efforts to reshore manufacturing. Intel, which ceded much of the smartphone industry to the competition, was eager to become a proactive participant. While the CHIPS Act was still winding its way through Capitol Hill, Intel announced plans to open a $10 billion manufacturing facility just outside of Columbus, Ohio. It was a high-ticket show of faith in not only U.S. manufacturing capabilities, but also the growth of tech scenes outside the usual hubs of San Francisco and New York.

Intel adds that it expects to invest 10x that over the next half decade, with its eyes set on Arizona, New Mexico and Oregon, in addition to Ohio. It says it expects those efforts will create 20,000 construction and 10,000 manufacturing jobs — music to the ears of an administration keenly focused on monthly jobs reports.

There’s also the added incentive of having a U.S.-based company making products in the U.S., which can alleviate bottlenecks by moving manufacturing closer to the point of consumption. All of these points are ones an incumbent can potentially hang their hats on in an election year.

“With this agreement, we are helping to incentivize over $100 billion in investments from Intel — marking one of the largest investments ever in U.S. semiconductor manufacturing, which will create over 30,000 good-paying jobs and ignite the next generation of innovation,” U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo notes in a release.

The question of whether the U.S. government is doing enough to level the playing field between domestic chip companies and the competition is another entirely. Many industry experts I’ve spoken to over the past few years have suggested that, while these initiatives are a good start, they don’t do nearly enough to cover the gap between U.S. manufacturing and the head start enjoyed by the likes of TSMC. One also has to account for the amount of time it will take many of these factories to come online.

Notably, Intel recently pushed back the manufacturing start date of its New Albany, Ohio, plant two years to 2027, citing changes to the business environment. As of the report, the company has spent $1.5 billion and had “69 employees from 14 Ohio counties working at the project site, and construction workers from 75 of Ohio’s 88 counties have contributed to the project to date.” Not the sorts of figures that are moving the needle on jobs reports just yet.

Additional sites are planned for Chandler, Arizona; Rio Rancho, New Mexico; and Hillsboro, Oregon.