The US Department of Energy (DOE) announced a conditional commitment to IceBrick Energy, for a loan of up to US$305.54 million to finance Project IceBrick, 9 December.
The guarantee from the DOE’s Loan Programs Office (LPO) includes US$303.69 million of principal and US$1.85 million of capitalised interest.
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IceBrick Energy is a subsidiary of Israeli-headquartered thermal energy storage startup Nostromo Energy.
Project IceBrick is a virtual power plant (VPP) made up of a maximum of 193 cold thermal energy storage (TES) installations at commercial buildings across California.
When solar electricity generation drops, demand for air conditioning remains high through the evening.
Nostromo claims this problem can be at least partially addressed with the company’s IceBrick. The system creates ice from a water and ethylene/propylene glycol solution within the TES cells and uses it to cool a given building’s circulated water during peak hours.
This could reduce the building’s electricity consumption by removing the need for chillers at peak hours. Nostromo’s Cirrus software can control the operation and performance of the systems either as a standalone or together as a VPP.
The system is modular, giving it the potential to be used in a variety of spaces and at different intervals. The TES cells are manufactured in Texas, Iowa, and California.
Operating at full scale, IceBrick could provide approximately 170MW/450MWh of behind-the-meter storage capacity.
This loan from the DOE is part of the outgoing Biden-Harris administration’s Investing in America agenda, which includes legislation such as the CHIPS and Science Act and Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).
If the loan guarantee is finalised, it will be offered through the Innovative Energy category of LPO’s Title 17 Clean Energy Financing Program which includes financing opportunities for projects that deploy new or significantly improved high-impact clean energy technologies.
The criteria for program eligibility are explained in the following image.
The DOE invited Nostromo into due diligence and terms sheets negotiations for a loan worth up to US$176 million in 2023.
Loan activity from the DOE and Loan Programs Office (LPO) has escalated following the predictions for and election of Donald Trump. Half of LPO’s activity under Biden-Harris has been since October 2024. Energy-Storage.news reported on the activity in early December (premium access).
The loan also supports the Biden-Harris administration’s Justice40 initiative, setting a goal that 40% of the overall benefits of certain federal investments in clean energy and other areas flow to disadvantaged communities marginalised by underinvestment and pollution.
Part of the Justice40 initiative, Project Maharu, 200MW of solar PV and 285MW/1,140MWh of BESS projects in Puerto Rico received a loan of US$861.3 million from the DOE in July.
Nostromo claims that at least 20% of the IceBrick projects will be installed in disadvantaged communities.
In a 2023 interview with Energy-Storage.news, Jennnifer Downing (premium access), senior advisor to the LPO and author of a report into VPP technology said the DOE wanted to highlight the importance of VPPs, “because they are so critical in meeting demand needs on the timescale that we need to electrify. If you look across those three pillars [three pillars of investment for the DOE: generation, grid-enhancing tech demand flexibility], VPPs can be among the fastest solutions.”
