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Connected Energy Secures Additional £15 Mn from 5 New Investors

June 18, 2022. By News Bureau

A further highly successful round of investment for Connected Energy has secured £15m from five new major investors and will be welcome news to all those keen to see increased energy security, improved use of clean energy and extended lifetime use of electric vehicle batteries in energy storage systems (BESS).

The Hinduja Group is one of the five new investors including Caterpillar Venture Capital Inc., Mercuria, OurCrowd and Volvo Energy to join existing investors Engie New Ventures, Macquarie, and the Low Carbon Innovation Fund with a total investment of £15m, to back this world leading venture on the energy storage landscape. The investment will enable Connected Energy to scale-up its operations and move into utility scale project development.

Connected Energy already has sixteen operational systems across Europe in Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK with its largest at Cranfield University in Bedfordshire, England.

Here the system allows the site to balance its energy behind the grid, accommodate a newly enlarged solar farm and an air source heat pump on the district heating to reduce reliance on the gas-combined heat and power system (CHP).

With an estimated 6.7 million pure EVs operational worldwide and 34.7 million predicted globally by 2030, the potential for battery reuse is vast, as is the need to ensure the resources in the batteries are used effectively. With this investment Connected Energy aims to scale up its business to utilise a predicted ramp-up in 2nd life battery availability in 2024/25.

According to Connected Energy CEO Matthew Lumsden, when batteries are around 25% degraded they are often considered unsuited to life in a vehicle but still have sufficient capacity for up to ten years’ more use in a battery energy storage system (BESS).

Over its lifetime in operation, a second life BESS can save an additional 450 tonnes per MWh of CO2 equivalent compared to using first life lithium-ion batteries, figures which explain the appeal of Connected Energy to investors and customers keen to support carbon reduction targets with meaningful action.

Rising fuel prices have caused many organisations to consider the use of energy storage to reduce costs, increase self-consumption and generate new revenue as well as solve problems such as supply constraints. As a consequence, Connected Energy has already booked more projects in the first three months of 2022 than in any previous year.

“In order to grow the second life battery industry, strong pan-value chain relationships will be critical to Connected Energy as it expands, and the company’s new investors will complement this effort” says Lumsden.

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Caterpillar Venture Capital

Hinduja group