Two non-vanadium long-duration technologies moved from engineering drawings into hardware within a single week of October 2026, in one case through manufacturing capacity and in the other through sheer project scale.

Energy Dome builds the factory before the fleet

On 8 October, Italian LDES developer Energy Dome formally opened a new manufacturing plant in Piacenza. The facility is focused on serial production of the core equipment for its carbon-dioxide storage cycle, including the large gas-holding domes that give the technology its name.

The plant is intended to supply projects in India, the United States and Ireland. That sequencing — factory first, fleet second — is unusual in long-duration storage, where most developers assemble equipment on site project by project. Volume production of domes and turbomachinery is the company's route to the cost curve that flow battery makers are pursuing through electrolyte and stack manufacturing.

Antora's 5.8GWh heat battery

On 1 October, US storage developer Antora Energy announced a 5.8GWh multi-day thermal storage project at the Pratt Energy biorefinery in Pratt, Kansas. The system stores heat in carbon blocks at up to 2,400°C and will supply firm electricity to Pratt Energy.

At 5.8GWh, the installation would rank among the largest battery energy storage systems in the world — while storing energy as heat rather than electrochemically.

Why thermal and CO2 routes matter to the LDES picture

Both technologies sidestep the two constraints that dominate vanadium flow economics: electrolyte supply and membrane cost. Energy Dome's cycle uses CO2 as the working fluid with off-the-shelf turbomachinery; Antora's uses cheap carbon and resistive heating. Neither depends on a specialty chemistry supply chain, and both target durations well beyond lithium's economic band.

The trade-off is conversion efficiency and, for thermal systems, siting near industrial heat offtake — Antora's first large project sits at a biorefinery rather than a utility substation. Energy Dome's challenge is different: proving that a manufacturing plant built ahead of confirmed order volume can keep unit costs down.

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