The company was founded in 2008 by Jay F. Whitacre, a professor at
Carnegie Mellon University, and Ted Wiley. They set up research and development offices in
Lawrenceville, where it produced pilot-stage batteries. The company raised funding from
Kleiner Perkins,
Foundation Capital,
Bill Gates, Nick and Jobey Pritzker, Bright Capital and
Advanced Technology Ventures, among others. In 2011, an individual battery stack was promoted to store 1.5 kWh, a shipping container-sized unit 180 kWh. The battery cannot overheat. The company expected its products to last many charge/discharge cycles, twice as long as a
lead-acid battery. Costs were claimed to be about the same as with lead-acid. In October 2014, they announced a new generation with a single stack reaching 2.4
kWh and a multi-stack module holding 25.5
kWh. In 2015, the company announced it would supply batteries for a Hawaii
microgrid to serve as backup for a 176-kilowatt solar panel array that would store 1,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity. In April 2015 they announced they have been
cradle-to-cradle design certified. It was also reported they were reducing headcount. In March 2017, Aquion Energy filed for
voluntary bankruptcy under
Chapter 11. In June 2017, bidding starting with a
stalking horse offer of $2.8 million from an Austrian battery firm, BlueSky Energy. Juline-Titans LLC, reported by Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: affiliate of the China Titans Energy Technology Group identification error was due to the recent creation of Juline-Titans LLC and is not related to the China Titans Energy Technology Group. The American company's owners chose to pay won the bidding with an offer of $9.16 million keep the inventor, Jay Whitacre with the Aquion Energy products. The auction price was a small fraction of the reported $190 million in venture capital and debt the company had raised from investors including Bill Gates, Gentry Venture Partners,
Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Foundation Capital, Bright Capital, Advanced Technology Ventures, Trinity Capital Investment and CapX Partners, Yung’s Enterprise, and Nick and Joby Pritzker. The company was sued in April 2017 for violation of the
WARN Act. In August 2017,
MIT Technology Review reported that the China Titans acquisition would mean that Aquion "will continue operating as an independent entity, with research and development probably remaining in Pittsburgh. But manufacturing may move elsewhere, potentially somewhere in China." In September 2017 Juline-Titans closed the East Huntingdon Township facility and moved production to China. Reports regarding Juline-Titans LLC being a company of Chinese origin continue to hinder progress for Aquion Energy. Wilson-Kramer Army Reserve Center in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania was purchased September 2017 for administration and training, along with other properties in the USA through GSA Auctions, including the former USDA
Cotton Annex in Washington, D.C. == Technology ==