{"id":562,"date":"2025-10-23T05:39:38","date_gmt":"2025-10-23T05:39:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.esplaza.com.cn\/?p=562"},"modified":"2025-10-23T05:39:38","modified_gmt":"2025-10-23T05:39:38","slug":"montreal-start-up-offers-long-duration-storage-for-remote-communities-industries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/en.esplaza.com.cn\/index.php\/2025\/10\/23\/montreal-start-up-offers-long-duration-storage-for-remote-communities-industries\/","title":{"rendered":"Montreal Start-Up Offers Long-Duration Storage for Remote Communities, Industries"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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A cleantech start-up in Montreal has raised more investment capital than it was looking for to pilot a new long-duration, iron-oxide storage battery intended primarily for remote communities and industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The \u201cbreakthrough technology\u201d offers \u201cunparalleled energy density, ease of deployment, and storage stability without self-discharge,\u201d FeX Energy said in a release last month. \u201cThese attributes make it especially well-suited for displacing high-cost fossil fuels in remote and hard-to-access locations.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The company, a spin-off from McGill University\u2019s Alternative Fuels Lab, raised a total of $4.78 million (US$3.5 million) from the Fathom Fund, a venture capital firm based in Houston, Toronto-based Amplify Capital, and Singapore-based Antares Ventures. The seed funding positions FeX to \u201cdemonstrate how our solution can replace high-cost fossil fuels in even the most remote and challenging locations, while laying the foundation for scalable growth across global energy systems,\u201d CEO Hayden Smith said in the release.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFeX exemplifies the kind of bold, scalable solution Canada can contribute to the global energy transition, combining scientific excellence with a clear pathway to industrial decarbonization,\u201d said Amplify Capital Venture Partner Trish Nixon. \u201cWhat impressed us was not only FeX\u2019s breakthrough technology, but also the team\u2019s commitment to building with purpose, impact, and integrity.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Smith, who previously spent nearly two decades working on gas turbine development for larger firms like Siemens Energy and Rolls Royce, said it wasn\u2019t easy to raise funds for the pilot installation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Trump election and the fear that was driven around cross-border investing and trading led our second round to take a lot longer than we wanted it to,\u201d he told The Energy Mix<\/em> in an interview earlier this month. \u201cIt was not an easy road, but quite an exciting journey. We\u2019ve advanced the technology, we\u2019ve advanced the commercial traction, and now we have three amazing investors\u201d\u2014with the combined ability to help the company attract its next round of funding, maintain a primarily Canadian presence, and scale into wider markets beyond North America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

FeX Energy is one of a growing number of start-ups that are looking to iron\u2014a common metal that makes up about 5% of the Earth\u2019s crust\u2014as a useful storage medium for energy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf you want to make energy storage really work, you need to make it out of something abundant and cheap that stores a lot of energy per unit volume, and stores it for a long time without losses, which is essentially what fossil fuels do over eons,\u201d Smith explained. \u201cThere\u2019s nothing better to do that than iron,\u201d a substance that oxidizes (rusts) as it releases energy, then returns to its original state when energy is added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He distinguished FeX\u2019s storage process from companies like Form Energy<\/a>, a Massachusetts-based firm that builds long-duration iron oxide batteries for power utilities using an electrochemical process not unlike the majority of batteries now under development. That approach reaps the benefit of an abundant, cheap storage medium, Smith said, \u201cbut you completely lose the density because you need an electrolyte that allows the flow of electrons or ions.\u201d The result is a physical footprint of about 1.2 hectares for 100 megawatt-hours of storage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By contrast, he said FeX\u2019s thermochemical system will be able to store the same amount of energy in \u201cjust a few shipping containers\u201d, making it a good fit for small, remote communities and hard-to-reach mining or military installations. \u201cThey\u2019re so far away that it\u2019s difficult and expensive to move materiel,\u201d making deployability a \u201ccore advantage\u201d for behind-the meter applications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other key gain is the ability to store energy \u201calmost indefinitely\u201d without losses in regions or seasons where winds can be calm or solar gain can be reduced for longer time spans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Smith said FeX plans to install a megawatt-scale pilot system next year in a government facility in Ontario, then deploy commercial units beginning in 2028. The company also has a signed letter of intent with an independent power producer that supplies mine sites and remote communities in the Arctic, he said. By 2030, the plan is to scale up to meet remote storage needs in Canada, Latin America, Australia, and Southeast Asia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOnce that business is being saturated, we\u2019ll enter into other markets like industrial processes and fossil heat displacement,\u201d offering an affordable alternative to natural gas for industries like chemicals, pulp and paper, and food and beverage. \u201cThat\u2019s the big prize to really abate the maximum amount of carbon emissions,\u201d , Smith said. \u201cBut it needs to be viable economically, and that viability will come with time,\u201d as today\u2019s fossil fuel economy is disrupted and prices rise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere\u2019s this point where the [oil and gas] market just becomes ruptured,\u201d he said. \u201cYou cannot sustain the cost<\/a> of the infrastructure on a reducing number of customers, you have less revenue and less profit<\/a> for reinvestment, and that just leads to this death spiral, which I believe is coming for fossil fuels. I hope it is, for all our benefit.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A cleantech start-up in Montreal has raised more investment capital than it was looking for…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":563,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-company","category-tech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.esplaza.com.cn\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.esplaza.com.cn\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.esplaza.com.cn\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.esplaza.com.cn\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.esplaza.com.cn\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=562"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/en.esplaza.com.cn\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":564,"href":"https:\/\/en.esplaza.com.cn\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562\/revisions\/564"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.esplaza.com.cn\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.esplaza.com.cn\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.esplaza.com.cn\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.esplaza.com.cn\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}