Energy Vault is mainly known for its gravity-based energy storage solution EVx but has recently expanded into BESS and also green hydrogen. The past few weeks has seen the company reveal progress on the first commercial gravity-based project, in China, and had approval for a large green hydrogen project in California.

The company said it has started the year by recording new project awards of 2.8GWh, worth US$1 billion, US$725 million of which were for EVx, although it didn’t reveal anything about the projects. Its ‘total near-term commercial funnel’ increased by over 40% quarter-on-quarter to 11GWh.

Energy Vault has also revealed that it was the unnamed ‘leading utility scale energy storage provider’ that participated in a US$75 million fundraising round by Kore Power in December 2022. Kore Power is a US lithium-ion gigafactory firm which has also moved into being a BESS integrator.

Energy Vault then made a second and final strategic investment in Kore during the recent quarter. It made the investment to “…build supply continuity on a prioritised basis for domestic US content supply chains for Energy Vault’s US customers, supporting our short duration battery energy storage solutions on a preferred economic basis.”

That will help it deploy projects with US domestic content to take advantage of a 10% adder to the new standalone investment tax credit (ITC) for energy storage, to which end it announced a partnership with developer Jupiter Power.

As Energy-Storage.news has reported, the exact requirements for the domestic content adder are yet to be revealed although Kore Power’s domestic production of lithium-ion battery cells and containerised solutions would suggest is is likely to qualify.

The company reiterated its full-year guidance of US$325-425 million, a 10-15% gross margin and an adjusted EBITDA loss of US$0-75 million.