Google announced earlier this week that it was building a new data center in Minnesota that would be powered by a mix of wind, solar, and a very unique battery built by startup Form Energy that’s capable of discharging for days on end. Now we know the price tag for that feat of electrochemical engineering: about $1 billion, according to The Information. Form Energy’s massive iron-air battery is capable of delivering a continuous 300 megawatts of electricity over 100 hours. It works by breathing, in a sense — oxygen pumped into the cells rusts iron, which releases electrons. The battery will work to smooth the flow of electrons from 1. 4 gigawatts of wind power and 200 megawatts of solar power. The startup has been chipping away at the technology for years, and it has built a factory in West Virginia to produce the batteries. But it hadn’t landed a major customer until this recent deal with Google. With a big order on the books, Form Energy CEO Mateo Jaramillo said that his company is in the process of raising a $500 million round. 4 billion to date, according to PitchBook. The company plans to go public next year

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