Reliance Industries-owned billionaire Mukesh Ambani announced on Friday that it will buy UK-based solar battery maker Faradion Limited for a business value of £100 million, to bolster its consolidation. its multi-billion dollar clean energy portfolio.
Reliance New Energy Solar Ltd (RNESL), which is wholly owned by Reliance, has signed termination agreements, the oil major retailing group said today in a regulatory filing with stock exchanges. decided to buy 100% of the shares in Faradion for a business worth 100 million GBP.
The renewables arm will invest an additional 25 million GBP as growth capital to accelerate commercial rollout, the company said in its statement.
Headquartered in Sheffield and Oxford in the UK and with its patented sodium-ion battery technology, Faradion is one of the global leaders in battery technology. The company has a broad, strategic and competitively superior IP portfolio that includes several aspects of sodium-ion technology.
Faradion’s sodium-ion technology offers significant advantages over alternative battery technologies, particularly lithium-ion and lead-acid. These advantages include not depending on and using cobalt, lithium, copper or graphite, Reliance says.
In addition, it is patented safe transport and storage that is zero voltage, low cost and has fast charging capability. It uses existing and proven lithium-ion production infrastructure with many commercial production partners. Its energy density is on par with lithium-ion phosphate and has a wider operating temperature range of -30℃ to 60℃, according to the statement.
” The sodium-ion technology developed by Faradion provides a leading global battery and energy storage solution that is safe, sustainable, offers high energy density and is remarkably cost-competitive. In addition, it has wide usage applications ranging from mobility to grid-scale storage and backup power,” said Mukesh Ambani, President of Reliance Industries.
“Most importantly, it uses sodium, which will secure India’s energy storage requirements for large renewables and the rapidly growing EV charging market. “We will work with the Faradion management and accelerate the commercialization of this technology through the scale-up of integrated and end-to-end giga production in India,” Ambani added.
Since October 10, Reliance has made a number of strategic acquisitions and investments to shape its green energy business, including solar, battery and hydrogen investments. It aims to gain access to advanced technology that can reduce the cost of renewable energy production, especially in solar power generation.
Reliance has invested $1.2 billion in partnerships with NexWafe, Sterling and Wilson, Stiesal and Ambri in an effort to build a fully integrated end-to-end renewable energy ecosystem.
“Dr. Jerry Barker, Ashwin Kumaraswamy and I founded Faradion in 2010 to develop sodium ion technology and bring it to market, with funding from Mercia Asset Management. This agreement with Reliance definitely establishes Faradion’s sodium-ion batteries as an integral part of the global value chain for cheaper, cleaner, more sustainable energy for decades to come’, Dr. Chris Wright, President and Co-Founder of Faradion said.
Reliance, which is expected to continue to invest in technology – such as fuel cells and key materials for the clean energy sector, is likely to commercialize the acquired technologies and set up new factories. machine made in india.
Mukesh Ambani at the company’s shareholder meeting in June announced plans to invest $10 billion in low-carbon energy, marking another chapter in the company’s transformation.
Over the next three years, Reliance will spend Rs 60,000 crore to build four ‘Giga factories’ to produce integrated solar modules, electrolyzers, fuel cells and batteries to store energy from the grid .
The locations of these plants will be at the new 5,000-acre Green Energy Giga Complex in Jamnagar. An additional Rs 15,000 crore will be used for value chain investments, technology and partnerships for the new energy business.
Shares of Reliance Industries last traded for a 0.48% premium at Rs 2,367.80/floor on bSE. Reliance opened on the BSE at Rs 2,370, swinging to an intraday high of Rs 2,379.45 and an intraday low of Rs 2,360.05, in the trading session so far.
