Sodium ion ESS developer Peak Energy has announced a $108 million capital boost after closing an oversubscribed Series ‘B’ financing round led by General Motors (GM).

The funding round, confirmed on October 21, was supported by other companies including LG Technology Ventures — and will help Peak fulfil over $1 billion in existing orders and launch its ESS into the data centre market.

Peak said earlier this year it would build a 4GWh Na ion BESS manufacturing plant in Sacramento, California, with a capital investment of up to $71 million.

The battery developer has an existing partnership with GM to jointly develop next generation Na ion battery cells for the storage market.

Peak says its flagship passively cooled ESS is engineered to address the components that make energy storage expensive to operate and maintain. The company claims its “fundamentally simpler architecture” can reduce the cost of energy by up to 20% compared with conventional storage systems.

In addition, Peak’s system claims to emit virtually no noise, consume no water and eliminates the leading causes of battery fires.

The new capital boost will supercharge Peak’s ability to scale and deliver as the world increasingly turns to passively cooled Na ion storage to meet energy needs, co-founder and CEO Landon Mossburg said.

GM Ventures president Kevin McCabe said the auto giant’s corporate venture capital arm was investing “to help Peak Energy continue to scale this innovative technology because we believe it has significant potential in the energy storage market as a safe, cost-effective solution using abundant, domestically sourced materials”.