Microgrid developer Gridscape and distributed power systems developer Scalvy are partnering to deploy multi-chemistry battery energy storage systems in California, the companies announced today.
The initiative, which is funded by the California Energy Commission, aims to build storage that is able to use both lithium-ion and sodium-ion chemistries within the same system. Mohamed Badawy, Scalvy CEO and co-founder, says the idea is to maximize the flexibility and performance of a battery while keeping costs down.
“Every battery chemistry has its own sweet spot,” Badawy told Latitude Media, explaining that sodium-ion can provide a lot of power over shorter periods of time, while lithium-ion is well-suited for delivering sustained energy over longer durations. “Combining them is a great idea to get the best of both sweet spots.”
The resulting storage system is designed to deliver the flexibility increasingly required by grid-connected loads, from standard peak-shaving to absorbing the rapid power fluctuations of AI data centers.
Despite its potential advantages, commercial deployments of multi-chemistry energy storage remain rare, with most existing projects simply co-locating separate chemistry types on the same site, rather than integrating them within a single unified system. The reason for that, according to Badawy, is that “it’s very difficult” to have one centralized power conversion system that works regardless of which chemistry it’s handling.
“It’s like a tree with the same root feeding all the branches, where all the branches have to be similar to one another,” he said, adding that this means a centralized architecture built to handle the flat voltage curve of sodium-ion is not able to adjust to the non-linear behavior of lithium-ion. “But if we replace that tree with a mesh network, where every node has a very high level of decentralization and individuality, you can really mix and match the storage devices as you need them.”
That’s where the power conversion system Scalvy is developing for Gridscape’s hybrid microgrids comes in. Scalvy has been working on distributed power delivery systems since Badawy, who used to work as a professor at San Jose State University, founded the company in 2022.
“As a professor, I was approached several times by companies with problems that could be solved with power electronics,” Badawy said. “But there was nothing in the market that could give them exactly what they needed. So the question became, is there a way to build a modular power delivery system that can be modular and scalable?”
The company’s goal was to create a platform capable of addressing different customer challenges without requiring customization — whether that means reducing inverter failure rates, extracting more power from batteries, or saving physical space inside a rack.
In March 2026, the company announced it raised an oversubscribed $13.9 million Series A funding round co-led by Silicon Badia and an unnamed strategic investor, with participation from others including Azolla Ventures and Climate Capital.
To develop the multi-chemistry battery with Gridscape, Scalvy is using a proprietary piece of hardware called “power neuron,” which is embedded at the battery pack level and pairs with software that makes it essentially agnostic to the pack’s chemistry. “The software understands these [chemistries’] different characteristics and treats them differently, even though you have the same hardware that goes in,” Badawy said.
It essentially allows every battery pack to think for itself, even while being controlled by a single power conversion system. The approach allows both sodium-ion and lithium-ion packs to be assembled in modular containers ranging from 250 kilowatts to one megawatt, which then connect directly to the grid and the load.
In its partnership with Gridscape, Scalvy is using lithium-ion and sodium-ion as initial chemistries. But the software is ultimately designed to be fully chemistry-agnostic, and could eventually incorporate second-life batteries as well as long-duration energy storage systems. Scalvy hopes to have a product certified by the end of the year, and to be able to start deploying alongside Gridscape in 2027.
