Energy Vault Expands Global Footprint With 10 Year License And Royalty Agreement Covering Southern Africa
Energy Vault Expands Global Footprint With 10 Year License And Royalty Agreement Covering Southern Africa. Energy Vault Holdings, Inc., a leader in sustainable, grid-scale energy storage solutions, has announced that it has signed a new licensing and royalty agreement in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region.
The agreement was executed in Q4 2023 with Gravity Energy Storage Solutions (Pty) Ltd, a consortium company focused on energy storage deployments in Southern Africa, and includes one of the largest listed engineering, procurement and construction companies in the region WBHO who will support all engineering, procurement and construction activities, as well as pan-African project engineering group iX Engineers and commercial developer Sizana Solutions, which has been partnered with Energy Vault since 2019 in development of the South African market for energy storage solutions. While the scope of the license and royalty agreement includes Energy Vault’s gravity energy storage systems (GESS) and its associated VaultOS™ energy management system (EMS), the consortium companies are also bidding Energy Vault’s leading portfolio of short duration battery and ultra-long duration Green Hydrogen hybrid systems within the SADC territory to address energy shifting and micro-grid development to serve the utility, mining and industrial sectors.
The multi-year agreement is expected to facilitate multi-gigawatt hours (GWh’s) of long duration Energy Vault GESS deployments to contribute to the SADC region’s energy storage needs, estimated to reach over 125 GWh by 2035. In addition to the technology licensing revenue, Energy Vault will receive a project revenue royalty over the complete operating life of each project, including software and maintenance revenues.
Under the terms of the agreement, GESSOL will have exclusive rights to deploy Energy Vault’s portfolio of gravity energy storage technology and VaultOS throughout the SADC region, a 16 member-state regional economic community with a mission to promote sustainable and equitable economic growth and socio-economic development. SADC’s member states are comprised of: Angola, Botswana, Comoros, Democratic Republic of Congo, Eswatini, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa, United Republic Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
“We conducted extensive due diligence to bring the most economical, efficient, flexible and sustainable long duration energy storage solution to the SADC region and Energy Vault’s gravity storage technology is the clear choice,” said Les Lange, Director, GESSOL. “Southern Africa is a rapidly developing region with increasing energy demand, which historically has been met with coal-fired plants. Economic development in the SADC region is critical for improving quality of life, but we need to rapidly wean the region off of coal to simultaneously reduce carbon emissions and grow our economy. Energy storage is critical for the scale up of clean, baseload renewable energy in the SADC region and we are confident that with Energy Vault’s GESS and energy management software, as well as its broader energy storage portfolio that can address both shorter and ultra-long duration, we can achieve this objective.”
The Energy Vault-GESSOL agreement brings together a coalition of world-class EPC and Project Engineering firms who will partner on Energy Vault GESS project deployment, including WBHO, one of the largest civil construction EPC contractors in the SADC region, and iX Engineers, one of the largest pan-African engineering design and consulting firms in the SADC region. “Given the significant pan-African potential of Energy Vault’s unique gravity storage systems, we’re excited to play a leading role in bringing the deployments covered by the Energy Vault-GESSOL agreement to life,” said Russell Adams, Director, Projects Division, WBHO. “With our license partners and our significant local skills base and supply chain, as an EPC contractor in Southern Africa, we’re very much looking forward to bringing our experience and expertise to bear so that deployment of Energy Vault’s technology, which incorporates substantial local content, can contribute to the energy transition in the region as it works to quickly accelerate its decarbonization efforts.”
Energy Vault’s expansion into Southern Africa represents the company’s strong global momentum with its gravity energy storage portfolio into another large and growing energy storage market.
