The participation of venture capital (VC) investors seems to have cooled, while project funding has conversely seen a sharp rise, in the latest quarterly report into funding and mergers and acquisitions from Mercom Capital.
In the third quarter (Q3) 2016 report on the smart grid, battery storage and energy efficiency sectors, VC funding for battery storage dropped to just US$30 million across nine deals, compared to US$125 million across 10 deals in the previous quarter. Q3 last year also saw funding drop from the preceding quarter, though not as sharply. In 2015, Q2 and Q3 stood at US$126 million across 13 deals and US$96 million across nine deals, respectively.
Mercom found that six battery sub-technologies shared the VC funds including energy storage management software and supercapacitors, as well as lithium battery makers, whole energy storage system makers, thermal energy storage and flow batteries, the latter of which appear to be a consistent target for VC funding announcements in the past couple of years the report has been produced.
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