Twenty-six Energy Prism containers will store solar power at an oil and gas production site in northern China. The operator chose EnerVenue’s water-based battery for its safety on a site where fire risk cannot be tolerated. First shipments are due in December 2026.
Fremont, California – EnerVenue has signed its first multi-megawatt-hour commercial order. Twenty-six Energy Prism containerized storage units, with a combined capacity of 11 MWh, will be installed at an oilfield in northern China, where they will store electricity generated by an onsite solar array and supply it back to the operation. The first three units ship in December 2026 and the remaining twenty-three follow in March 2027.
The order was placed by a major Chinese oil and gas producer for one of its established production sites. Further details of the project, including the end user, will be shared as the installation progresses.
Oil and gas sites are among the most safety-conscious industrial environments in the world, and any equipment installed on them has to satisfy the operator’s fire and process safety requirements before its performance or its cost is considered. That requirement was the deciding factor in the choice of battery.
Henning Rath, Chief Executive Officer of EnerVenue, said: “An oil and gas producer does not put new technology on a working site unless it is completely satisfied that the safety case is sound, and this customer examined everything before choosing us. It is a perfect location to deploy a large scale project.”
“A battery designed to run for thirty years is a piece of infrastructure, and infrastructure gets judged on how it performs across its whole life rather than on the day it is delivered. We built the Aqueous Metal Cell for customers who think about it that way, and it’s very satisfying to see such huge demand for our product.”
EnerVenue’s Aqueous Metal Cell carries zero risk of fire from thermal runaway. Its electrolyte is water based and non-flammable, it contains no lithium, and it has passed UL 9540A, the industry’s standard test for battery fire propagation, with no fire propagation at cell level.
Dr Majid Keshavarz, Chief Technology Officer of EnerVenue, said: “While thermal runaway is generally defined as a self-accelerating sequence of exothermic reactions, the AMC chemistry does not produce the same progression of events that leads to ignition, fire, explosion, or propagation to adjacent cells. That is a property of the chemistry itself, and it is what allows this battery to go onto sites with the strictest fire safety requirements.”
Rahul Mehta, Chief Revenue Officer of EnerVenue, said: “Oil and gas operators are among the world’s most demanding buyers of industrial equipment, and fire safety is non-negotiable. We are proud that our first multi-megawatt-hour order has come from a customer that rigorously evaluated our technology on precisely this critical requirement.
This order demonstrates growing demand for energy storage designed not only for exceptional fire safety, but also for reliable performance over decades. That combination of safety and long operating life is the value EnerVenue brings, and the conversation we want to advance across every market we serve.”
The project pairs solar generation with battery storage on an operating oilfield, shifting daytime solar output into the hours when the site draws power. The Energy Prism units will be built from EnerVenue’s fourth-generation Aqueous Metal Cell and delivered as complete containerized systems, ready to connect to the site’s power conversion equipment.
EnerVenue’s first Aqueous Metal Cell installation, a 150 kWh system integrating onsite renewable generation with electric bus charging, has been operating at Jintan in Changzhou since November 2025. The Northern China project is the company’s first commercial contract at multi-megawatt-hour scale.
The cells for the project will come from EnerVenue’s new high volume manufacturing line in Changzhou, Jiangsu, which opens on Thursday 24 September. The factory will produce 250 MWh of Aqueous Metal Cells a year in its first phase, which is around 300 cells a day at full automation, with production ramping to 1 GWh in 2027 and multi-gigawatt-hour scale by 2028 as capacity expands. It is the first facility in the world to produce the Aqueous Metal Cell at scale.
EnerVenue will also be unveiling its full range of products at the factory launch on 24th September. Energy Core, at 30 kWh, is designed for distributed and remote sites. Energy Cube, at 108 kWh, is designed for in-building and data centre use. Energy Rack, at 150 kWh, is designed for commercial, industrial and grid-connected work. Energy Prism brings the same cells to utility and heavy industrial sites. All four are built on one chemistry.
The Aqueous Metal Cell is a water-based metal battery built on nickel-hydrogen chemistry. The same chemistry powered the Hubble Space Telescope and the International Space Station for decades, and EnerVenue re-engineered it with low-cost materials for use on Earth. The cell is designed for 30,000 charge cycles, equivalent to up to three cycles a day for thirty years, compared with a typical lithium-ion figure of 8,000 to 10,000 cycles, and it requires no scheduled augmentation across that life. A lithium-ion installation is typically replaced or augmented every seven to ten years. Over the life of a project that changes the economics. An Aqueous Metal Cell installation needs no augmentation, no active cooling and, where local codes allow, no fire suppression system, so the auxiliary equipment that usually adds cost and complexity to a storage site is largely absent, and the levelized cost of the energy it stores over thirty years falls accordingly. The cell uses no lithium and no rare earths. Its bulk materials are steel, nickel, glass-fiber composite and a water-based electrolyte, and the nickel and steel can be recovered and reused at end of life.
EnerVenue has customer projects across six geographies: China, Australia, the United States, the European Union, Saudi Arabia and Canada. Customers include Radiance Energy in Canada, PowerSecure in the United States and Horizon Power, the Western Australian state-owned regional utility. The Changzhou line is funded by the $300 million Series B extension announced in March 2026 and led by Full Vision Capital, and EnerVenue has raised over $700 million in total.
