Reliance Buys Sodium-Ion Battery Tech Company

Reliance New Energy Solar Ltd, which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Reliance Industries, recently purchased Faradion Limited. Reliance is the largest private sector company in India. It’s also an energy company that focuses primarily on fossil fuels. The fact that its solar business has purchased Faradion shows that it’s making moves into battery development.

Faradion, the press release noted, has an extensive portfolio that covers many aspects of sodium-ion technology, providing some advantages over lithium-ion and lead-acid. The full list of advantages are:

• No dependence or use of cobalt, lithium, copper, or graphite.
• Patented zero-volt safe transport and storage.
• Low cost with the total cost of ownership compared with lead-acid batteries with the potential for more cost reductions.
• Uses existing lithium-ion manufacturing infrastructure which makes it scalable. Also, the company noted that it’s already been proven with several of its commercial manufacturing partners.
• Its energy density is also on par with lithium-ion phosphate and has a wider operating temperature range of -30℃ to +60℃.
• It also has fast charge and discharge capabilities.

Reliance stated that it will use Faradion’s technology at its proposed fully integrated energy storage factory, which is part of the Dhirubhai Ambani Green Energy Giga Complex project at Jamnagar, India. Chairman of Reliance Industries Mukesh Ambani welcomed Faradion and its team to Reliance in the following statement.

“We welcome Faradion and its experienced team to Reliance family. This will further strengthen and build upon our ambition to create one of the most advanced and integrated New Energy ecosystem and put India at the forefront of leading battery technologies. The sodium-ion technology developed by Faradion provides a globally leading energy storage and battery solution which is safe, sustainable, provides high energy density, and is significantly cost competitive. In addition, it has wide use applications from mobility to grid scale storage and back-up power.

“Most importantly, it utilizes sodium, which will secure India’s energy storage requirements for its large renewable energy and fast-growing EV charging market. We will work with Faradion management and accelerate its plans to commercialize the technology through building integrated and end-to-end giga scale manufacturing in India. We believe this will be one of our many steps that will also enable, accelerate, and secure large scale energy storage requirements for our Indian partners developing and transforming India’s EV mobility and transport sector.”

Faradion CEO James Quinn shared that Reliance is the perfect partner to support the company’s growth in the Indian market while accelerating the transformation of the global energy market.

“Faradion has been one of the first to champion sodium-ion battery technology. Reliance is the perfect partner for supporting Faradion’s growth in the rapidly expanding Indian market and to jointly speed up the transformation of the global energy market. Becoming part of the Reliance group validates the incredible work our team has done in advancing sodium-ion technology. Together with Reliance, Faradion can bring British innovation to India and globally, as the world increasingly looks beyond lithium. We look forward to being part of India’s Net Zero mission.”

Dr. Chris Wright, chairman and cofounder of Faradion, touched upon why he and his fellow co-founders started Faradion and how the new acquisition positively impacts Faradion.

“Dr Jerry Barker, Ashwin Kumaraswamy, and I founded Faradion in 2010 to develop sodium-ion technology and bring it to market, with funds from Mercia Asset Management. This deal with Reliance firmly 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.”

Green Car Congress noted that as part of the transaction, Halsor Topsoe plans to divest its shareholding in Faradion which corresponds to c.16% of the fully diluted share capital at the date of completion. You can read more about that here.