EnerVenue and Towngas have commissioned the first real-world pilot of EnerVenue’s fourth-generation Aqueous Metal Cell energy storage technology at a facility in Jintan, Changzhou, China.
The pilot is owned and operated by Towngas, Hong Kong’s first public utility and one of China’s largest energy suppliers. The site combines on-site renewable energy generation with electric bus charging stations, giving the storage system a daily operating profile built around real load demand rather than a controlled laboratory cycle.
The system uses a custom AC block containing 50 Aqueous Metal Cells in an Energy Rack configuration. The outdoor-rated enclosure delivers 150kWh of storage capacity and includes an inverter and battery management system.
EnerVenue is using the project to demonstrate repeated charge and discharge operation over two- to four-hour periods, matching site demand while supporting energy cost reduction. The company is positioning the technology for grid-scale storage, renewable integration, industrial infrastructure, and high-load applications such as AI data centres.
Henning Rath, chief executive officer of EnerVenue, said: “Towngas does not choose technology that might work; they want technology they know will function safely, efficiently, and reliably every day, for decades. These demanding requirements are exactly what our fourth-generation AMC and Energy Rack technology were designed to meet, and we’re very proud to demonstrate their performance under real-world conditions.”
The company says its AMC technology has a 30,000-cycle design life, compared with the 6,000 to 8,000 cycles typically associated with lithium-ion battery systems. EnerVenue also cites wide-temperature operation, reduced dependence on complex heating and cooling systems, and the absence of lithium or toxic electrolytes among the design’s key attributes.
Those characteristics put the technology into a contested part of the energy storage market, where grid and commercial users are looking beyond cell cost alone and weighing lifetime throughput, safety, maintenance, and uptime. Long-cycle storage systems must withstand repeated use without turning every deployment into a thermal management or replacement planning exercise.
Peter Wong Wai-yee, managing director of Towngas, said: “As a major energy supplier operating throughout China, Towngas is committed to clean energy solutions that support the transition to a sustainable, low-carbon future. Long-life grid-scale storage that is safe, reliable, and low-maintenance is essential to maximizing the cost-effectiveness and widespread deployment of renewables.”
The pilot follows EnerVenue’s recent $300m funding round, which is supporting manufacturing scale-up in Changzhou. Construction of a new 250MWh high-volume production line is due to begin later this year, with further commercial demonstration systems planned with partners worldwide.
Technical information on the company’s modular storage platform is available through the EnerVenue Energy Rack and Energy Prism product pages.
