Private investment giant Carlyle is funding a New York-based startup to scale up community-level renewables over the next four years.
NineDot Energy announced the strategic investment from Carlyle this past weekend. The funding should enable NineDot to develop, build and operate more than 400 MW of clean energy systems by 2026.
The company’s primary focus are battery storage projects in downstate New York including Queens, Staten Island, the Bronx and Long Island.
“Distributed energy technologies sit at a sweet spot for unlocking a rapid transition to wide-scale sustainable energy generation, storage, and consumption,” Adam Cohen, chief technical officer and co-founder of NineDot Energy, said in a release. “Their small-footprint, modular design matches local community and power grid needs. NineDot’s scalable, replicable deployment model reduces costs, complexity, and development cycles.”
Carlyle has committed more than $100 million to the NineDot Energy battery storage projects. The startup also has worked on vehicle-to-grid and hydrogen fuel-cell efforts, according to reports.
“We believe the rapid evolution of the electric grid necessitates additional deployment of distributed energy resources,” David Gluck, a Carlyle principal specializing in energy transition investing. “This is an important investment theme for our platform. We are proud of our new partnership with the talented team at NineDot, who is focused on increasing the reliability of the New York City grid, and look forward to leveraging Carlyle's deep industry knowledge, broad network, and development expertise to support their growth as a leader in developing community scale clean infrastructure.”
New York is targeting 6 GW (6,000 MW) of energy storage capacity by 2026. The battery capacity can help facilitate several grid resiliency purposes including smoothing out of renewable intermittency.
The U.S. solar and utility-scale battery storage sector has received several billion dollars' worth of long-term commitments just in recent months. See EnergyTech's coverage of those funding annoucements.
EnergyTech also coverage the intersection of energy storage, solar and hydrogen last week during the InterSolar North America-Energy Storage NA Conference and Exhibition in Long Beach, California. Read our #isnaesna22 coverage here.
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(Rod Walton, senior editor for EnergyTech, is a 14-year veteran of covering the energy industry both as a newspaper and trade journalist. He can reached at [email protected]).
