Charging Ahead: Hong Kong's Ampd Energy is expanding globally to make construction sites greener

Brandon Ng, director of Hong Kong-based battery energy storage system maker Ampd Energy, accelerated growth despite global headwinds.

Soaring lithium prices and supply chain issues aren't stopping Brandon Ng, co-founder and CEO of Hong Kong-based Ampd Energy, from moving forward with his plans to global expansion. His company has created an all-electric replacement for diesel generators on construction sites. Having started in Hong Kong, Ampd has recently expanded to Singapore and Australia. Ng sees Europe as his next market as the construction industry begins to clean up.

Construction sites are among the biggest polluters and decarbonising the construction industry is a crucial front in the fight against climate change. Today, construction companies look to companies like Ampd to power equipment like tower cranes and welding machines. "Sustainability is no longer a central program for a marginalized group," says Ng, who earned a master's degree in chemical engineering from Imperial College London. "I think now everyone cares."

Ampd, which was founded in 2014 and made the inaugural 100 to watch list last year, says its products emit up to 85% less carbon dioxide than traditional diesel generators and produce zero exhaust emissions such as nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide. A typical diesel generator on a construction site produces around 100 tons of carbon emissions each year, which is equivalent to the amount of greenhouse gases produced by around 22 gasoline-powered cars driven continuously during the same period.

Ampd produces Enertainer, a 7.3 ton, 2.6 meter high energy storage system with 30,000 lithium-ion battery cells to run construction sites.

COURTESY OF AMPD ENERGY

The company began by manufacturing lithium-ion battery-powered backup generators for buildings requiring uninterrupted power, such as hospitals, data centers and telecommunications networks. Then, in early 2018, Hong Kong's Gammon Construction, which had just launched a campaign to reduce carbon intensity - or emissions per unit of energy - by 25% by 2025, approached Ampd to see if its technology battery could be adapted to power construction sites. .

After almost two years of tinkering, Ampd created a 7.3-tonne, 2.6-meter-tall shiny white box containing 30,000 lithium-ion battery cells. Ng named it Enertainer, a portmanteau of energy and container. “It was unprecedented in construction,” he says. "It was the first time anyone had tried to fully utilize an energy storage system to run the job site."

"Sustainability is no longer a central program for a marginalized group."

Brandon Ng, co-founder and CEO of Ampd Energy

In October 2019, Gammon Construction, a 50/50 joint venture between Hong Kong conglomerate Jardine Matheson and Balfour Beatty, Britain's largest construction company by turnover, became the first company to use the Enertainer . Gammon deployed them to power equipment used to build the nine-story, 108,000 square meter, $600 million Advanced Manufacturing Center for the government-backed Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks (HKSTP was also one of Ampd's first backers). Since then, Ampd's client list has grown to include some of the region's leading family-owned real estate companies: the brothers