By Michelle Ma, Bloomberg

A Bay Area startup has turned on the world’s largest industrial heat battery.

Rondo Energy is helping power Holmes Western Oil Corp.’s enhanced oil recovery system. Holmes replaced one of its natural gas-fired boilers at a project in Kern County, California, with a 20-megawatt solar array paired with Rondo’s 100-megawatt-hour battery, which heats up clay bricks with electricity to generate steam that’s then used to force oil from the ground.

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