Connected Energy, a UK company that builds stationary Energy storage systems based on batteries for decommissioned electric cars, has raised ￡15m from five new investors, including Volvo Group, the Swedish commercial vehicle group.
Volvo Group alone (not to be confused with carmaker Volvo Cars) invested about £4m for a 10 per cent stake in Connected Energy through its subsidiary Volvo Energy. Connected Energy is valued at £40m, or €46.8m, with funds totalling €17.5m.
Other new investors are Caterpillar, Hinduja Group, Mercuria and OurCrowd. Existing investors in Connected Energy include Engie New Ventures, Macquarie and the Low-carbon Innovation Fund.
The company plans to use the money to expand its operations and "move into utility-scale project development," the statement said. M-stor will also be the first large-scale system to be developed. The energy content of the secondary energy storage unit should be between 20 and 40 MWh. So far, old batteries have come from Renault, Forsee and Jaguar Land Rover, among others. In the future, batteries from Volvo Group vehicles will also be used.
Connected Energy already has 16 operating systems in Europe in Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK, the largest of which is located at Cranfield University in Bedfordshire, UK. "Strong pan-value chain relationships are critical to the expansion of Connected Energy in order to develop the secondary battery industry, and the company's new investors will complement this effort," said CEO Matthew Lumsden.
"There is a lot of untapped potential for battery reuse. "This forward-looking investment aims to facilitate the scale-up of secondary battery storage systems and further ensure that Volvo Group's secondary batteries will pay off the upcoming recycling opportunities." "Together with Connected energy, we will minimize the environmental impact of the batteries that power Volvo Group vehicles," said Joachim Rosenberg, president of Volvo Energy. Volvo Buses has announced that it will launch a reuse program for scrap batteries in electric buses in 2020. At the time, a deal was struck with Batteryloop, a subsidiary of Stena Recycling.