Quino Energy has been selected by Tencent for a grant under its CarbonX programme to fund a megawatt-hour scale organic flow battery system for Himandhoo Island in the Maldives, marking the first commercial deployment of its water-based quinone battery technology.
The challenge
Remote island communities like Himandhoo Island in the Maldives typically depend on imported diesel to generate electricity, an arrangement that is expensive, exposed to supply disruptions, and vulnerable whenever extreme weather affects fuel deliveries. Integrating renewable generation such as floating solar helps reduce that dependence, but only if paired with storage that can reliably shift power to when the island actually needs it, while standing up to the demands of an island microgrid environment.
The results
Quino Energy, a company developing water-based organic flow batteries, has been selected by Tencent for a grant under its CarbonX programme to fund development of a megawatt-hour scale battery system for Himandhoo Island in the Maldives. The battery will be integrated into a larger microgrid featuring floating solar PV financed by the Asian Development Bank, and will complement the ongoing Preparing Outer Islands for Sustainable Energy Development (POISED) project, which is installing terrestrial solar and lithium-ion batteries on the same island.
The Quino Energy battery will give the microgrid the storage capacity it needs to cut reliance on expensive imported diesel, lowering costs while providing a more resilient power supply for the island community, including during extreme weather or fluctuating demand.
The project is supported by Atri Energy Transition, which led Quino Energy’s Series A funding round in October 2025. Atri will collaborate with Quino Energy to manufacture the proprietary organic electrolyte in nearby Pune, India, and will also provide operations and maintenance support for the battery system for at least five years after commissioning. Suqian Time Energy Storage, the parent company of fellow FBE member Jena Flow Batteries, will supply the flow battery hardware. Earlier in June, the project team visited Himandhoo Island and met with the local council as well as representatives from the Maldives Ministry of Climate Change, Environment, and Energy in the capital, Malé.
Eugene Beh, CEO and co-founder of Quino Energy, described the CarbonX grant as an opportunity to demonstrate the company’s organic flow battery in a setting that can directly benefit a community, and called it the first commercial deployment of the technology, alongside earlier government-supported projects. He added that the collaboration shows how Quino’s technology can continue to bring together partners from around the world to advance the next generation of flow batteries. S. Kishore, founder of Atri Energy Transition, congratulated Quino Energy and the project’s stakeholders, framing Tencent’s selection of Quino as an endorsement of organic electrolyte chemistry and welcoming Atri’s role in helping move it from pilot to commercial scale.
Quino Energy CEO Eugene Beh accepted the grant at the CarbonX Award Ceremony on 24 June, organised by TED Countdown alongside London Climate Action Week. Over the past 18 months, Quino Energy has also closed its Series A funding round led by Atri Energy Transition, received a 10 million dollar grant from the California Energy Commission, secured 5 million dollars from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Critical Facility Energy Resilience programme to support a 5 MWh flow battery deployment in Southern California, and signed a Joint Development Agreement with Jena Flow Batteries.
