Australian software billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes has thrown more of his financial weight behind a US thermal battery storage company, allowing Antora Energy to reach financial close on plans for its first giga-scale project.
The Cannon-Brookes private investment vehicle, Grok Ventures, is the only external investor in Project Big Stone in South Dakota, a 5 gigawatt-hour (GWh) thermal battery located at a bioprocessing facility owned by the world’s largest biofuel producer, Poet.
The company declined to say how much was invested in the project.
Antora has installed some 200 thermal batteries, housed in containers, at the site with commissioning starting in March. The company says the project will be fully operational later this year, and took just 12 months to build from breaking ground to “energy delivery”.
Heat from the battery will be sold to Poet under a long-term offtake agreement.
