Key indicators
- Industry: Energy storage
- Founded: 2017
- Headquarters: Somerville, Massachusetts, USA
- Notable fact: Form has five founders, including MIT Professor Yet-Ming Chiang and Mateo Jaramillo, formerly of Tesla. It’s the result of two separate companies merging when the founders realized they had the same vision for long-term energy storage.
Potential for impact
Form has demonstrated that iron-air batteries can be built at one-tenth the cost of lithium-ion batteries, largely because the primary materials used to make them are cheap and abundant. That low cost could make it feasible for utilities to use the batteries for long-duration scenarios, storing energy for up to 100 hours.
Storage is a pivotal issue in the adoption of renewable energy. Consumers need to access energy at all times, and their usage fluctuates throughout the day. But renewable energy sources like solar produce energy only at certain times, like when the sun is out. Lithium-ion batteries—which dominate the battery market—aren’t a great solution since they are expensive, have less storage capacity, and may have a shorter lifespan than iron-air batteries.
Today, fossil fuels are often burned to compensate for gaps in production, exacerbating climate change. If enough iron-air batteries are storing energy for these moments, the grid could move away from fossil fuels.
Caveats
Form was featured on the 2023 edition of this list and has made steady progress: The company finished its new factory in West Virginia earlier this year, but it hasn’t started producing batteries to ship to customers just yet. Form is now running production trials at the factory. So although Form has significant orders from utility companies around the US, it has yet to fulfill any and deploy its batteries commercially.
