Chicago startup to build 3,000 solar charging stations in Jordan

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http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-allcell-jordan-solar-charging-stations-biz-20150805-story.html

e old warehouse on Chicago's Southwest Side betrays nothing about its tenant: a startup maker of battery packs that has inked a deal to deploy up to 3,000 solar-powered electric charging stations during the next decade in Jordan.

"This is our biggest project ever," Said Al-Hallaj, co-founder and chief executive of AllCell Technologies, said. He placed the value of the deal at $120 million. "It shows we can go on our own now,'' he said.

Al-Hallaj, a dual citizen of Jordan and the U.S., was a professor at Illinois Institute of Technology when he co-founded the company in 2001 based on his Ph.D. research in lithium-ion batteries. AllCell has patented a technology that absorbs the heat generated from lithium batteries, making them safer and doubling their life span, said Al-Hallaj, who began running the company full time in 2008.

Solar is seen as key in mass deployment of electric vehicles both in industrialized nations where the grid is congested and in developing countries and remote areas that suffer supply shortfalls or lack access to the grid, said Guenter Conzelmann, director of the Center For Energy, Environmental and Economic Systems Analysis at Argonne National Laboratory.

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