Bill Derasmo chats with Dr. Majid Keshavarz, chief technology officer at EnerVenue, about the evolution of nickel-hydrogen batteries from their NASA origins in the 1970s to today’s grid applications.
Join host Bill Derasmo as he chats with Dr. Majid Keshavarz, chief technology officer at EnerVenue. They trace the evolution of nickel‑hydrogen batteries from their NASA origins in the 1970s — proven on missions like Hubble, the ISS, and Mars — to today's grid applications. Tune in to learn how this inherently safe chemistry delivers decades‑long service life, high cycle counts, and recyclable materials for long‑duration, grid‑scale storage.
Battery + Storage Podcast — NASA to Grid: The Journey of Nickel-Hydrogen Batteries With Majid Keshavarz, EnerVenue
Host: Bill Derasmo
Guest: Dr. Majid Keshavarz
Recorded: October 30, 2025
Aired: November 11, 2025
Bill Derasmo (00:03):
Welcome back to the Troutman Pepper Locke Battery + Storage Podcast. I am your host, Bill Derasmo. Today we have on the program Dr. Majid Keshavarz, who is the Chief Technology Officer at EnerVenue. Dr. Keshavarz has been with EnerVenue since 2020 and has a PhD in chemistry from RPI. Before coming to EnerVenue, he held a series of senior positions at other cutting-edge companies. Welcome to the program, Majid.
Dr. Majid Keshavarz (00:34):
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Bill Derasmo (00:36):
Well, why don't I give you a chance to introduce yourself to the audience and tell us a little bit about EnerVenue.
Dr. Majid Keshavarz (00:42):
Sure. I'm Majid Keshavarz, chief technology officer at EnerVenue. I've been in energy space for more than 20 years in Silicon Valley, involved with a few startups. My focus has been non- lithium-ion batteries, energy storage mainly for grid applications. Spent many years on flow batteries, different type of chemistries, ion, chromium, vanadium batteries. Also spent few years working on sodium-ion batteries before I joined EnerVenue and started working almost six years now on nickel-hydrogen battery. I believe that we are the only company working on nickel-hydrogen battery. It's interesting. That is all technology, but with a new twist. The technology was developed by NASA back in 1970s and deployed in aerospace applications. Happy to get into details of the technology.
Bill Derasmo (01:48):
Sure, sure. Well, why don't we talk for a minute about the nickel-hydrogen start there and I guess I would ask in the market right now, obviously lithium-ion dominates the grid scale storage space. We've had a lot of guests on talking about that. We have had guests talk about vanadium and talk about some other battery chemistries. What do you think differentiates nickel-hydrogen and the advantage that it gives in the marketplace?
Dr. Majid Keshavarz (02:18):
Very good question. Nickel-hydrogen battery. First of all, lithium-ion is a great technology, has its used for a lot of applications in my, I believe, mobile applications, cell phones, laptops, and EV. Great chemistry for those type of applications. When it comes to grid, it's a little bit different because of the scale of the grid you're talking about hundreds of megawatt hours grid, gigawatt hours and safety becomes extremely important, especially thermal runaways and ions and explosions that we have witnessed over years and there is not a week that goes by and we don't hear another incident. Nickel-hydrogen battery is a water-based rechargeable battery. It's based on nickel hydroxide on the cathode side and hydrogen electrode on the anode side and separated by a porous separator, soaking electrolyte. All batteries have these four components, anode, cathode, electrolyte, and separator. In this case, since we generate hydrogen and the anode is hydrogen gas, this is sealed hermetically in a vessel in a canister that is required in order to contain the hydrogen battery.
So why hydrogen battery? Besides safety, it is the most durable battery ever designed in my opinion, and it's shown 40 years in aerospace. It was deployed in International Space Station by NASA, Hubble Telescope, Mars Rover, and many other applications. In case of International Space Station, it was basically in service for 19 years without any maintenance. As we know, other type of batteries require augmentation over years. Service. So maintenance is a huge expense opex. So reliability, safety are two factors. Also. It performs very well at extreme temperatures, high temperature, low temperature, very flexible and it's easy to… At EnerVenue, we have simplified the design as well. It's manufacturability. We've been working on that aspects of it, which is very, very important. Also, recyclable. This battery can be recycled. Components are, it's not like the ion, which has basically seven different metals used here we are talking mainly nickel and plastic and steel. These are an electrolytes water-based, so it's very easy to recycle basically the older components.
Bill Derasmo (05:12):
Those are quite a few important reasons. We have also talked about the issue of what you do with batteries when they're expired or when they're no longer useful, and we've had some discussions around that around trying to deal with the so-called black mass and pulling the elements out of it. And then there's also second life applications we've had a client on that's talking about taking the batteries out of the cars and using them in a grid scale application. It's always an interesting aspect of the discussion as well, but what you're saying on that point is that it's really just nickel that you would need to deal with. You wouldn't have a lot of the other metals that you'd have to deal with, so that's interesting.
Dr. Majid Keshavarz (05:52):
Yes. You don't have copper, aluminum and other on the type of ion, like NMC is different like manganese and cobalt.
Bill Derasmo (06:03):
Manganese, sure. Yeah. Well, one of the other things that's interesting too, when we talk about battery storage and the grid scale side is the issue of duration. So lithium-ion tends to be used in a four hour, two hour. I mean, it can be used in longer duration of question, but it just tends to be in the market right now. I don't have statistics on it, but a lot of the installations are hitting in that four-hour range. So if you could talk about long duration, I think that would be interesting. I was on your website before we started the conversation, and I know there's a piece on there about long duration. So if you could talk about your battery chemistry with respect to long duration. I think that would be.
Dr. Majid Keshavarz (06:46):
Yes, there is no issue actually with this battery, then you can do long duration. Some of the clients are interested. Right now we have deployed racks of batteries for six hours, eight hours, so it's designed for two hours to 12 hours, but it can go longer, no issue whatsoever. Some of these limitations from get-go, we address those. And also not all batteries are charged symmetrically, meaning you can charge faster a few hours in the afternoon for solar from solar source and discharge in the evening, six hours, eight hours, et cetera. So this is also, I should highlight the fact since it's very durable and it can be cycled applications like that, you need multiple cycles per day is also important so we don't have to worry about it since these are, they can last more than 30,000 cycles or so, and we are talking about decades. The simple map is three cycles a day for 30 years comes up about 30,000 cycles. So compared to other technologies, it lasts a lot longer.
Bill Derasmo (08:02):
So if you're a utility and you have to serve your load and you look at the mix of resources that you have and you see that you've got a need, say it's eight hours, that shows up when your solar, obviously it's getting dark or it's at nighttime, so obviously the solar is gone, but you've still got an evening peak or whatever it is. It sounds like you could deploy the EnerVenue batteries for a period of six hours, eight hours, whatever it is, and you don't have to ramp your gas back up.
Dr. Majid Keshavarz (08:36):
Exactly, exactly. That's exactly what we're talking about. Also, since you can handle multiple cycles, we can do arbitrage as well, right? You can charge the value when the electricity is low cost and discharge that peak time when it's more expensive. So you can actually accommodate different applications.
Bill Derasmo (08:59):
That's the classic storage proposition, right? You can discharge when you need it the most, and prices tend to be higher, and then you can charge it or refill the reservoir, so to speak. If it's pump storage hydro at night when it's cheap and you can still be making use of your baseload resources that sort of have to stay on. So it all fits together, the puzzle in that way. And you mentioned the word durable, I think you use the term resilient. So in terms of the battery chemistry, and you talked about cycling, how does the nickel-hydrogen battery chemistry, how does it tolerate the ramping up and down?
Dr. Majid Keshavarz (09:42):
Very good question. That is why it lasts very long. It's not very sensitive to overcharging or deep discharging. The chemistry is very different than the lithium-ion, so we don't have to really worry about it. You can tolerate that. It's very forgiving, so you can have overcharged case, but it comes back. It won't start thermo one way that we are aware at 10% overcharged with things get starting here. You don't have to worry about that.
Bill Derasmo (10:17):
Okay. It's interesting. My neighbor across the street, true story, bought an electric vehicle before the expiration of the tax credit for electric vehicles. That was up September 30th, and he was telling me that they like you to keep it charged in the range of 80% down to, I forget what he said, maybe 40% or 30%. And I didn't follow up asking him a question about why not just charge it up to a hundred percent, but maybe it's what you're getting into that it's actually preferable to not have it overcharged.
Dr. Majid Keshavarz (10:49):
Yes, that's well known for lithium-ion, you don't really charge it. It just decreases the life of the battery. I drive electric vehicle myself. You can see that it is the nature of lithium-ion, so the higher it goes, the shorter the life will be.
Bill Derasmo (11:07):
That's interesting.
Dr. Majid Keshavarz (11:09):
Same thing with deep discharge, but this is the reason we say it's very durable or forgiving battery that you can have a deep discharge in a hundred percent or charge to a hundred percent of its capacity.
Bill Derasmo (11:24):
Very interesting. And as a company, EnerVenue, I assume that you customize the solution to the customer's needs. So in other words, you can shape the grid scale installation to, as you said, it has various applications. So it could be the peak energy need or it could be something else. It could be ancillary services, as we call them, load file, whatever it is. I was just curious about the other applications aside from just the energy release.
Dr. Majid Keshavarz (11:57):
Yeah, they're all basically the same in a way that you need to charge a battery, right? Whether the source is renewables, whether it's wind or solar or grid or some other sources, even diesel generators if necessary, of course then that's usually not the case. And being able to use it later when it's needed and be able to cycle these things multiple times a day, that is the key. It's not limited to certain number of cycles in the life of the bay.
Bill Derasmo (12:37):
So in other words, you could use it for the morning ramp and then not use it and then use it for the evening ramp if you had to. You could cycle it that way?
Dr. Majid Keshavarz (12:48):
Yes, yes.
Bill Derasmo (12:50):
Okay. Interesting.
Dr. Majid Keshavarz (12:51):
Yeah. Or wind at night. Because windmills work at that time different than solar panel, they're complimenting each other.
Bill Derasmo (13:00):
Yeah, no, absolutely. Absolutely. So if a company wants to work with EnerVenue to say, learn more about your long duration product, what should they do?
Dr. Majid Keshavarz (13:12):
Oh, contact us, I believe on the website, the commercial team definitely will reply. We can start with a meeting or the requests requirements. We are working with number of people, number of companies all over the world right now, Australia, Europe, US, China. So we have a commercial team and they will definitely please contact them. We can contact me if you want. I pass on the information and we can go over the product and depends on the scale. Right now, usually the customers start with one or two racks, a hundred, 200 or kilowatt hours. They test it and then they order megawatt hour.
Bill Derasmo (14:00):
So they can do a pilot and get comfortable with it and then go larger. You can go for a larger installation.
Dr. Majid Keshavarz (14:06):
Right now our cells are large format, it's three kilowatt hour battery capacity is, and it's 133 amp hour. Each rack is 50 of these vessels, so it's 150-kilowatt hour rack. And we can connect fuel of them easily to get to megawatt hour or whatever the customer's demand based on.
Bill Derasmo (14:35):
And then in terms of technical support, how do you support the customer once installed?
Dr. Majid Keshavarz (14:40):
We have field service folks team that globally, we have a team anywhere in the world can be supported.
Bill Derasmo (14:47):
Excellent, excellent. And in terms of the future, where do you think EnerVenue is going next? And you have your products now, where do you see your company moving into as the industry continues to evolve?
Dr. Majid Keshavarz (15:00):
I see us manufacturing multiple gigawatt hour energy storage in by 2027 or so. That's what we are focusing on right now. The first product for grid applications. Of course, this chemistry and this technology has a potential to come up with different type of cells as well. These are energy cells, as they said in the industry. We are also, we can have power cells and other type of batteries that requires for other applications, but our focus right now is grid applications, utilities.
Bill Derasmo (15:42):
And the grid needs it because every region in the United States anyway is getting tighter from a capacity perspective. All you hear about is load growth data centers, how are we going to fuel data centers? And even without the data centers margins, were getting tighter in terms of capacity reserve margins, so battery storage, all types of storage. That is one of the ways that the problem is being addressed because I think in part it's because they're dispatchable. So you have this influx of wind and solar renewable energy that's been cited onto the grid, but it's not dispatchable, it's not controllable. But the advantage that battery storage has is it is, and you can control it. That's where I'm fascinated personally by the long duration possibility, because obviously it has to withdraw energy from somewhere, whether it be co-located generator or the grid. But that being said, if you get into a situation where it's an eight-hour, 10 hour, 12 hour battery, it starts to look like a dispatchable generation because it's sort of like a gas generator at that point. And so to me, that's the grid operators I think are going to be more and more interested in the long duration solution.
Dr. Majid Keshavarz (17:04):
Also, microgrid, autonomous, it doesn't have to be grid tight when you're talking about long duration, that also become a reality to have a source to charge the battery and support it for very long time.
Bill Derasmo (17:19):
That's an interesting one. The microgrids, we talked a lot about microgrids it seems like maybe like seven, eight years ago, and then sort of faded from the conversation a little bit. But for sensitive installations, it's still highly relevant, whether it be a, I don't know, a sensitive national security type of facility, like a military facility or a sensitive research facility or something where you need on-site power and you need some autonomy, the ability to continue to operate if there's a catastrophic failure on the grid. So if you have that type of long duration solution there too. Agreed. That could be an important way for enter venue to have its products deployed.
Dr. Majid Keshavarz (18:04):
Yes, it's becoming a reality actually.
Bill Derasmo (18:08):
Yeah. In that regard. So in addition to working with utilities, are you working with other types of customers?
Dr. Majid Keshavarz (18:15):
Yes, we are working with actual utility companies that are interested in both grid-type and autonomous applications.
Bill Derasmo (18:25):
Okay. Sure. Alright, well just let the audience know if they're interested in working with your company to go to EnerVenue.com and they can inquire about customized solution. And I'll give you the last word. Thank you very much.
Dr. Majid Keshavarz (18:45):
Yes, please contact us if you're interested in this technology via EnerVenue.com, commercial team, or myself or anyone, you can contact me. We definitely pass information to commercial team, willing, willing to, and we can start with meetings. Explain the technology. It's different. Lithium-ion is dominating the market. That's understandable. So it takes some time to explain this technology and we are happy to do so.
Bill Derasmo (19:19):
Thank you so much. It's the nickel-hydrogen technology capable of long duration or shorter duration solutions. We appreciate having you on the program and customers you know where to go if you're interested in talking with EnerVenue. Thank you so much for being on the program today. Thanks for having me.
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