CEPM to Present “Rust: A Modern Solution for Grid-Scale Battery Storage”

The Washington & Jefferson College Center for Energy Policy and Management will host a free Feb. 5 webinar on how Form Energy is ramping up production of its innovative iron-air, long-term storage batteries at a new plant built on the site of the former Weirton Steel mill.

“Rust: A Modern Solution for Grid-Scale Battery Storage” will be the subject of a free, hour-long webinar at 11 a.m. Feb 5. It will be presented by Diana McMillan, a senior engineering manager with Form Energy, as part of CEPM's Energy Lecture Series.

With increasing amounts of renewable energy being added to the grid, new technologies capable of storing electricity for days are needed to ensure reliability and affordability when power cannot be generated. Form Energy has reinvented existing technology to create an iron-air battery that reacts with oxygen to store and release energy for the electric grid. The system components are some of the safest, cheapest, and most abundant materials on the planet - iron, water, and air.  The batteries can store electricity for 100 hours at system costs competitive with legacy power plants.

Form Energy, based in Massachusetts, completed construction of its first high-volume battery manufacturing facility, Form Factory 1, in Weirton, W.Va., in mid-2024. It is ramping up production and soon plans to begin shipping iron-air batteries to customers. After a planned expansion it will have more than 1 million square feet of manufacturing space, employ over 750 people, and have an annual production capacity of 500 megawatts of batteries.

Diana McMillan is a senior engineering manager and operations leader at Form Energy, bringing over a decade of industry expertise as a process and operations engineer. With a career dedicated to ensuring safe, high-quality, and cost-effective production, Diana now leads a team focused on pioneering multi-day energy storage solutions. She will explain the need for long-term storage to ensure a reliable grid and Form Energy’s technology, and provide insight into the company’s Weirton operations and future plans.

The webinar is free and open to the public. To register, visit wjenergy.org or click here.

The seminar is approved for Continuing Legal Education in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio. Contact the Washington County Bar Association at wcba@washcobar.org for information.