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COURTESYTHE BOTTOM LINE SimpliPhi Power, a profitable private battery maker in California, says demand is increasing for its nontoxic systems that store SIMPLIPHI
renewable energy for individuals and organizations on and off the grid.Last year, when Jesse Gerstin was leading the Clinton
Foundation’s climate initiatives, one of his tasks was to
bring reliable power to hospitals and other critical infra-
structure in Puerto Rico. Hurricane Maria had devastated
the island a year earlier, highlighting just how vulnerable
its electrical grid was. It remains unreliable today.
Solar power made the most sense. The question was
how to store energy to use at night. One of the engi-
neers working with Gerstin suggested pairing the solar
equipment with batteries made by SimpliPhi Power.
The company, based in Oxnard, Calif., manufactures
what it describes as clean, safe lithium-ion batteries,
free of cobalt, the toxic element that can lead batteries
to overheat and catch fire. SimpliPhi’s power systems
instead use lithium iron phosphate (LFP), a compound
that doesn’t have those risks. Blue Planet Energy and
Sonnen, makers of energy storage systems, also pro-
duce batteries using the safer compound.
The Clinton Foundation and other groups have since
installed SimpliPhi systems—batteries, management soft-
ware, and other tools—in multiple hospitals and clinics
across the island. The model is proving useful for California
homeowners and businesses dealing with the blackouts
prompted by wildfires, says Gerstin, who joined SimpliPhi
in May as head of sustainable business development.
SimpliPhi is competing with Sonnen, Tesla Inc., and other
battery makers to play a bigger role in the shift away from
fossil fuels to clean energy. “How can we talk about clean
energy if we’re using a chemistry that is fundamentally haz-
ardous and toxic?” says Catherine Von Burg, SimpliPhi’s
co-founder, president, and chief executive officer.
Lithium-ion batteries are a decades-old technology
that revolutionized consumer electronics in the 1990s
and electric power vehicles more recently. (Three scien-
tists who developed the batteries—John Goodenough,
M. Stanley Whittingham, and Akira Yoshino—won this
year’s Nobel Prize in chemistry.) The technology is con-
sidered crucial to the widespread adoption of solar and
wind energy because the electricity generated needs to
be stored cheaply and safely when the sun isn’t shining
and the wind isn’t blowing.
Energy storage installations around the world will
“multiply exponentially” over the next two decades,
requiring $662 billion in investment, according to a July
forecast from BloombergNEF, Bloomberg LP’s primaryresearch service on energy transition. The market today
relies more on cobalt chemistries, but the safer LFP
compound used is increasing its market share in com-
mercial and residential facilities and utilities, says Logan
Goldie-Scot, head of energy storage analysis at BNEF.
Unlike other battery startups that have burned through
hundreds of millions of dollars of ven-
ture capital, SimpliPhi hasn’t taken any.
The company, which gets most of its
revenue from equipment sales, has
been profitable since 2013, doubling
or tripling revenue annually, says Von
Burg. The company expects revenue
to exceed $20 million for 2019. Tens of
thousands of its systems, which range
from bright yellow portable emergency
power kits to units big enough to power
entire hospitals, have been deployed in more than 40
countries. All its employees, including manufacturing line
workers, are part-owners.
Electrical engineer Josh Crosby, president of
power-system consulting firm CatalystE in Huntsville, Ala.,
has been using SimpliPhi’s batteries in projects for the U.S.
military since 2014. Their safety track record, efficiency,
and price—two to three times less than what military bat-
tery makers charge—led him to SimpliPhi, he says. Its bat-
teries have been tested at the U.S. Army Aberdeen Proving
Ground in Maryland and the Marine Corps Base Camp
Lejeune in North Carolina and deployed in Afghanistan,
Iraq, and elsewhere. “Cobalt is more energy-dense and
lighter, but it’s not going to last as long, and you have an
inherent risk of fire,” Crosby says.
In October 2018, SimpliPhi Power relocated from
an 8,000-square-foot factory in Ojai, Calif., to a
25,000-square-foot factory in Oxnard, where all of its bat-
teries are made on the same production line. Von Burg
plans to break ground on a second factory next year,
potentially in Africa or in India, she says. Improving energy
access with nontoxic batteries “isn’t a moralistic argument
about what’s right, what’s wrong,” she says. “Shifting to
renewables is critical.” —Nick LeiberCleaner, Safer
Lithium-Ion Batteries
SimpliPhi’s nontoxic power
storage business is profitable
and venture capital-free SOLUTIONS Bloomberg Businessweek November 18, 2019One type of
SimpliPhi battery