EnerVenue, a start-up co-founded by Full Vision Capital, the family office of Hong Kong tycoon Peter Lee Ka-kit, has begun manufacturing a new battery it expects to challenge existing energy-storage technologies dominated by mainland Chinese players, amid surging global demand for green energy. The California-based company can now produce 250 megawatt-hours (MWh) of nickel-hydrogen batteries annually at its factory in Changzhou, in eastern China’s Jiangsu province, and plans to raise capacity to one gigawatt-hour (GWh) in 2027. “In this [energy-storage] segment, we believe we are very competitive across the board on key metrics,” CEO Henning Rath told the South China Morning Post in an interview on Friday. “When it comes to safe, sustainable and long-duration energy storage, I think this is the market segment we want to play in.” The inauguration of EnerVenue’s plant in China comes five months after the company completed a US$300 million fundraising round backed by a clutch of investors including Full Vision Capital. “It’s the first battery of its kind that acts like infrastructure rather than a degrading asset,” Rath said. “It can operate in the world’s harshest environments and has no risk of fire from thermal runaway. What we prove here, we can build anywhere.” EnerVenue’s battery acts like infrastructure rather than a degrading asset, according to CEO Henning Rath. Photo: Handout EnerVenue’s nickel-hydrogen technology, which has been used for decades in aerospace applications, relies on aqueous metal cells and is set to compete with lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries, one of the most widely used chemistries in mass-market electric vehicles (EVs) and energy-storage systems (ESS). The company’s nickel-hydrogen batteries could deliver 30,000 full charge-discharge cycles and had a design lifespan of 30 years, making them resilient in extreme weather conditions, Rath said. By comparison, an average LFP battery lasted 10 to 15 years and delivered about 6,000 charge-discharge cycles, according to analysts. EnerVenue’s batteries will also compete with other grid-scale storage technologies, including sodium-sulphur batteries, flow batteries and pumped hydro systems, which store energy by moving water between reservoirs at different elevations. The company said production would rise to multi-GWh scale in 2028 and that it had already secured multi-MWh orders from several clients. One project involving 26 energy prism containers, with a combined capacity of 11 MWh, would be deployed at an oilfield in northern China, it added. Named by Time magazine as one of the top 10 US green technology companies in 2025, EnerVenue has developed processes to commercialise nickel-hydrogen battery technology and reduce the total life-cycle cost of ESS technology. Its potential applications span solar photovoltaic projects, wind farms, EV-charging infrastructure and power grids. The Changzhou facility is EnerVenue’s first plant producing the water-based nickel-hydrogen battery. The company planned to deploy production lines in markets like the Middle East and the US, according to Rath. China dominates the global ESS battery industry, with mainland companies accounting for more than 80 per cent of the market, according to analysts. Global ESS battery demand rose 79 per cent year on year to 550GWh in 2025, according to Seoul-based SNE Research.