Market research firms Boston Consulting and Pike Research, have estimated a growth of more than US$10 billion over the next five years for the stationary energy storage market. An increased use of advanced battery technologies and new smart-grid technologies to enable the wide-scale use of wind and solar energy has could lead to as much as a 30% increase.
This has been facilitated by the latest round of funding grant awards from the US Department of Energy’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act 2009 Storage Demonstration program. This and enabled companies like EnerVault to complete its first installation. The company’s 1MWh system will be installed with partner Raytheon Ktech at a solar installation near Turlock, California, US.
EnerVault has announced the completion of a US$15.5 million Series B financing, bringing total funding to date to US$24.5 million. The company's investors include Mitsui Global Investment, Total Energy Ventures, 3M, TEL Venture, Commercial Energy of California, Oceanshore Ventures and US Invest. The investor funds compliment the company's grant awards totalling $5.5 million from the US DOE, California Energy Commission and New York State Energy Research and Development Authority. EnerVault is developing energy storage systems based on a novel redox flow battery technology.
"Redox flow batteries are creating a new paradigm for grid-scale energy storage," said Richard See, investment partner at MGI. "Because you scale the power independently of energy storage capacity, you can tailor the system to the needs of the application. EnerVault's approach expands upon the fundamental configuring and sizing benefits of flow batteries to yield the best approach for utility-scale electricity. The more energy needed, the lower the costs, so it's ideally suited for a number of situations where more than an hour or two of storage is needed."
"There is a high level of interest in our systems for addressing the stationary energy storage market," commented EnerVault CEO and co-founder Dr. Craig R. Horne. "Utilizing our patented Engineered Cascade technology, we are able to develop large-scale energy storage systems needed in a variety of applications with an unmatched combination of cost-effectiveness, safety and reliability."
