Europe is betting big on a battery that runs for four days
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- Ore Energy announced an agreement with Dutch energy supplier Budget Thuis to deploy 1 GWh of iron-air battery storage, starting with a committed 400 MWh first phase targeted for 2028 delivery.
- Ore Energy raised $43 million in Series A funding from Plural and HV, bringing total raised to more than $61 million, with the new capital earmarked for its first manufacturing facility ahead of a gigawatt-hour-scale target in 2028.
- Ore Energy's iron-air batteries can store electricity for up to 100 hours using only iron, water, and air, packaged in modular 40-foot containers that can be daisy-chained to scale capacity — a contrast to lithium-ion systems typically designed for a few hours of discharge.
- The Budget Thuis pact is described as the first iron-air storage agreement with a European energy supplier, and the company notes iron-air's bulkier, lower-efficiency profile is offset by cheaper materials suited to grid-scale, multi-day storage.
- Ore Energy completed a pilot with EDF in France between August and November 2025 — described as Europe's first grid-connected iron-air long-duration storage pilot — along with an earlier grid-connected installation in Delft, Netherlands.
- CEO Aytaç Yilmaz said European grids are already curtailing clean power at scale and relying on fossil fuels to cover gaps, arguing that short-duration batteries alone cannot serve wind-heavy grids that need storage across days.
Why it matters: Budget Thuis locks in 1 GWh of multi-day storage to hedge against volatile fossil fuel prices, while Ore Energy's $43 million Series A and 400 MWh first-phase commitment give it a concrete path to gigawatt-hour-scale manufacturing by 2028. Iron-air's cheap, locally-sourced materials position it as a complement to — not a replacement for — lithium-ion across Europe's wind-heavy grid.
