Questions about Qnetic, answered by the team

Grid power spins a carbon-fiber rotor inside a vacuum. Slowing it back down turns that motion into electricity again.

Each unit is designed for 500 kWh and 125 kW, about four hours at rated power. These are design targets.

While it runs, magnets hold the rotor with nothing touching it. Two mechanical backup bearings catch it if something faults.

About 11,000 rpm at full charge, with the controls capping it at 11,100 rpm on a rotor designed for 13,000.

It stores electricity from any source on the grid. It does not generate power.

A carbon-fiber rotor, a steel housing and neodymium magnets. The fiber will be sourced in the US; the magnets come from China today.

Flywheels already run on the grid for seconds to minutes of power. Qnetic is building one that stores energy for hours.

Possible in principle, but Qnetic builds stationary storage for the grid.

The target is 85% round trip. It has not been measured on Pulsar yet, and results are expected in Q2 2027.

As often as the grid needs. Cycling does not reduce its storage capacity.

On Vega the bearings and cooling drew a few kilowatts in total. Pulsar's figure is being measured.

There are no cell replacements over its life, and that is where the lifetime cost advantage comes from.

About four hours at rated power by design. It is built for daily cycling rather than storing energy for weeks.

Stored energy grows with the square of speed, so a lighter rotor spun very fast beats a heavy, slow one.

Air would drag on the rotor at speed. A pump rack keeps a near-vacuum, and the pump is a serviced part.

A closed liquid-cooling loop handles the heat, so it needs no building-scale climate control.

Qnetic supplies the whole machine, power electronics included. The Pulsar demo connects at 480 V three-phase.

It is on the long-term research list. The focus now is qualifying today's carbon-fiber rotor.

Roughly 300 to 400 MWh per hectare as a planning estimate, without the fire lanes lithium needs.

The case does not depend on lithium standing still. The cost model already assumes large lithium improvements.

Solid-state batteries are not in commercial grid use yet. Flywheels already are.

The rotor is designed for 22,000 full cycles with safety margins. Cycling uses up fatigue life, never capacity.

It would be serious. That is why units go underground and several independent safeguards make it extremely unlikely.

There is no electrolyte and no thermal runaway, so there is no battery-style fire. It is designed to meet UL 9540, with certification still to come.

Units sit on isolation mounts designed for each site, and backup bearings take the load inside.

Yes. It is designed to island and keep supplying local power from its stored energy.

The rotor and bearings are built to last the unit's life. Pumps, electronics and cooling are replaced on a schedule.

Nothing hazardous is needed to store the energy. It uses ordinary industrial fluids for cooling.

The magnets carrying the rotor's weight need no power, and two backup bearings catch the rotor.

Units are isolated from the ground and designed to be installed underground. Noise levels will be measured in testing.

Once the test cell is complete, followed by utility pilots with independent data.

Vega proved the core technology, and Pulsar has run 100 fault-free cycles at low speed. High-speed testing comes next.

The plan is to ramp production from late 2027 into 2028, depending on test results.

Not yet. The first grid units will be beta units at a utility pilot.

Carbon fiber is the biggest cost, and volume plus a growing fiber supply bring it down.

SOSV backed Qnetic early, alongside a strategic investor and thousands of crowd investors.

Hardware venture firms usually wait for pilot results, which this stage is building towards.

Qnetic monitors federal and state programs. None are held today.

Yes. Email [email protected] with your background.

In Sacramento, California.

Prototypes get built and improved fastest there. The company, factory and first market are in the US.

The 2023 round built Vega, the first prototype. The next raise built Pulsar.

Four PCT filings cover the rotor and magnetic-bearing design. Some are granted and others are in examination.

Co-founders Michael Pratt and Loïc Bastard lead the company with Malcolm Mathews and Hugh McDermott.

Not in the current plan. Qnetic builds grid-scale units, and a licensed home product may come later.

Units are modular, so a site adds as many as it needs, up to town scale.

The renewable storage case stands without AI. AI data centers add a second, urgent one.

Torus uses flywheels for fast response. Qnetic's flywheel stores energy for hours at grid scale.

Competition is expected. The hard part is a qualified, integrated product, and the design is covered by patent filings.

They complement each other: Qnetic for fast, multi-hour cycling and iron-air for multi-day storage.

There is no list price yet. Pricing is set per project, aiming at a capital cost comparable to lithium-ion at scale.

They are letters of intent, not binding orders. Turning them into contracts depends on the pilots.

SMUD is set to host the first beta units, and EPRI evaluates the technology and publishes the results.

It provides synthetic inertia through its inverter rather than traditional spinning reserve.

Management estimates the US market in the hundreds of billions of dollars by 2050. That is a forward-looking estimate.

The US comes first. Other regions and licensing may follow later.

Qnetic doesn't see it as a fight. The real challenge is the pace of the energy transition.