Our Technology

Meet the Joule HiveTM
Thermal Battery

Our Joule HiveTM Thermal Battery turns zero-carbon energy into firm industrial heat

Our Joule Hive batteries store energy just like any other battery, except we store it in the form of heat instead of electricity, momentum or chemical bonds. First, we take in electricity (often clean, often intermittent) and convert and store the electricity as heat through our electrically-conductive firebricks. Then we blow air or another gas through the system to deliver heat to any industrial process. 

How it Works

Other thermal battery approaches today often use bricks or rocks to store heat, but rely on traditional heating elements (think toaster wire) to generate and then transfer heat to the storage media. This limits peak temperature and durability, thereby increasing cost and decreasing reliability.

Our Joule Hive Thermal Battery is intentionally simple—the bricks inside our system triple as the heating element, thermal storage media, and heat exchanger. By stacking our electric bricks in a pattern with traditional firebricks, we’re able to build massive three dimensional heated circuits that can provide near flame-temperature heat to any industrial process. What could be simpler (or lower cost)?

What’s more, our Joule Hives are purpose built for affordability and improved reliability. We use common, commodity materials and work with traditional firebrick manufacturers. This removes the need for new manufacturing processes, eliminates possible supply chain delays, and ensures this new energy storage system is reliable and ready to scale from day one.

By removing traditional heating elements, we also free our systems for unique configurations to meet industrial needs. We can stack bricks in traditional shipping containers for modular, drop-in supplements to deliver hot gas to existing systems. We can stack bricks 45 meters high in towers to provide GWhs of heat as a synthetic flame. We can even line furnace walls to provide direct radiative heat.

Our Partners

Our innovative bricks and Joule Hive Thermal Battery systems were designed to scale easily and overcome the getting-to-scale burdens that many new technologies face as they grow. By working with existing brick manufacturers, industry associations, seasoned investors, and government, we’re moving quickly and reliably to scale.