#6 Energy Storage News & Views

Welcome to the 6th edition of my Energy Storage News & Views, a bi-weekly newsletter where I will be sharing the latest developments in the world of Energy Storage and an update on things here in the Energy Storage and Grid practice at Hyperion Executive Search.

Once again, it's been an eventful couple of weeks for me and the Energy Storage and Grid team at Hyperion.

The highlight had to be Solar & Storage Live in London, where I had the pleasure of speaking on a panel at event. I was joined by some fantastic panellists (Nick Provost (Balance Power), Edward Keith (RhoMotion), Luke Sweeney (National Infrastructure Commission), Martin Wright (Gravitricity) as we discussed Future Energy Scenarios for Battery Storage: 2025 - 2035. The audience was packed out and I really enjoyed sharing my thoughts on how we're seeing the battery market evolve now and in future years!

I'll be at S&S Live Birmingham later this year with the rest of the Hyperion team and you can register for this here

Additionally, our new Senior Consultant, Hristiyana Indzhova, who I welcomed in the last edition, has made a flying start already, with some great work on live Managing Director, Technical Director, and Senior Electrical Engineer mandates. It's also been great for us to get together in person to plan where we can continue to add value to our Energy Storage sector.

Next week I head to the Netherlands again to meet up with an ESS client I met recently, who are planning further European expansion. Exciting!

Industry News

New rules on grid connections and associated fees for the Netherlands

On the back of the departing government pledging €100M in subsidies for Solar and Storage in 2025, there has been further positive news coming out of the Netherlands. New rules which will reduce grid fees in the Netherlands by providing ‘non-firm agreement’ (NFA) connections as well as time-weighted rates could improve returns and double projected BESS deployments but it it has also been met with trepidation from some major grid-scale BESS developers like SemperPower.

Tesla making more strides when it comes to in-house battery production

Over the last few years Tesla has continued to increasingly focus on developing it's own batteries with 2023 exceeding production targets. They've now ordered 6 trillion (that's right, trillion) electrodes from LG Energy. A further sign on their independence in the EV battery value chain.

Encouraging news on stand-alone residential BESS installations in the UK

There is a growing consensus that home battery installations will soon be the first choice for consumers compared to solar-tied batteries. The practical efficiency of residential batteries, coupled with more attractive financing options and VAT removals from the Government, are making home BESS installations more and more common, without the need / want for PV. UK provider GivEnergy has seen a surge in interest in 2024 and the UK's Microgeneration Certification Scheme (MCS) showed huge update in battery installations, including over 1,000 in one month, for the first time ever.

Commercial production of Sodium-ion Batteries

US Sodium-ion battery scale-up, Natron Energy, has opened it's first at scale manufacturing plant to produce their "50,000+ cycle-life" sodium-ion batteries, which will be primarily used for ESS in data centres initially, before progressing to industrial e-mobility, EV charging, and telecomms. A further sign of the potential sodium batteries have, with CATL continuing advancements in Sodium battery tech (looking at Auto OEM licensing agreements for their 2nd Gen Sodium battery design) and great UK players like Faradion and LiNa (both Hyperion clients) advancing their products towards commercialisation too. If we're going to achieve the level of battery capacity needs, lithium alternatives will be essential.

Falling revenues for major BESS players Fluence & W?rtsila

Fluence saw an 11% revenue drop (y-o-y) in Q1 revenues, with some of this attributed to the timing of delivery of their products. They did see a jump in profitability however, and have focused on the launch of a higher energy density product (Gridstack) and shifting to US module production later this year.

Fluence were not alone in announcing a profit drop. Finnish BESS player, W?rtsila, saw revenues drop in Q1 but this was more aligned with project timing with the company attributing it as ‘periodisation of revenues’.

Recruitment Trends

We're progressing a number of exciting assignments right now, across the world of BESS, battery manufacturing and supply materials, and battery and grid software, both in UK, wider Europe, and the US.

Additionally, I received some great recommendations from candidates we placed in the sector recently, as you can see here. We do our best to deliver a quality experience for both clients and candidates so feedback like this really does mean a lot.

Deals

Reactive Technologies - ￡25M (Series D) - To further enhance their delivery at scale, expand globally, and build the the team and internal operations.

Ore Energy - €10M (Seed) - To further mature their iron-air energy storage technology, particularly focused on longer-durations. The funding will also help them go one step further towards building their first commercial-scale factory.

Bedrock Materials - $9 million (Seed) - To further develop their sodium-ion battery technology and scale-up their R&D and pilot facilities in Chicago, USA.

Cylib - €55M (Series A) - The largest round ever raised by a European battery recycling company. The funds will be used to power the industrialization of their proprietary recycling technology and for scaling up operations at an already-secured brownfield industrial facility in Germany.?

Plus Power - $82 million (Tax Equity) - This latest investment from Morgan Stanley will provide the capital costs for the BESS developer-operator's 90 MW / 360 MWh Superstition BESS facility in Arizona, USA.

Princeton NuEnergy (PNE) - $10.3 Million (Series A) - To support construction of the battery recycling scale-up's 'Advanced Black Mass and Cathode Manufacturing Center' to further industrialise their direct-recycling process.

Scout Clean Energy - $100M (Equipment Supply Loan) - To secure down payments on critical equipment supply in a quest to reduce capital costs and further accelerate their pipeline development and execution, as a leading full IPP

BASQUEVOLT - €1.58M (Early VC) - To further accelerate the industrialisation of their solid-state battery innovations and grow their teams across engineering, production etc

Green-Y - €3.07M (Early VC) - To further optimize the Swiss start-ups Compressed Air Energy Storage technology and advance the marketing of their systems

Aura Power - ￡10M (Debt) - To further support their pipeline development of Solar PV and BESS projects in the UK, Europe and NorAm, by covering expenditures like grid payments, planning fees and legal land costs

Akaysha Energy - $6.4M (DOE Grant) - to help fund the scaleup of their automated characterization and sorting technology for batteries within E-waste

LiNova Energy - $15.8M - To expand its R&D efforts, scale up operations, and accelerate the commercialization of its high-energy polymer batteries

Insights

Phenomenal Battery growth in ERCOT.? As the saying goes, “Everything's bigger in Texas”, right? Well evidently it seems that way when we talk about Battery Storage deployments!? ERCOT is booming right now, as outlined in this brilliant video from Brandt Vermillion and Wendel...?Read more.?

First-of-a-kind (FOAK) financing in Germany - finally a break through with Bill Gates on board? Decarbonising our economy quite often means investing a lot of money - especially when it comes to capital-intensive infrastructure projects — like energy storage systems or green hydrogen.? This has been a particular challenge for German...?Read more

Zero Degradation Battery. Really?!? This week, the world's largest battery manufacturer, CATL (Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd) ?unveiled TENER, it's latest BESS product with 6.25 MW capacity, with bold claims that this product has zero degradation for its first 5 years...?Read more

Be Agile When it Comes to Compensation Packages! I've partnered on recruitment campaigns with tech startups and scaleups for the last 10 years, across multiple verticals including cyber security, process technology, to energy storage and grid. Over the years, I've seen so many different ways of...?Read more

Cleantech and AI - the places to be for investors in Germany! Intuitively, it makes sense that the two hottest investment spaces in 2023 were cleantech and AI companies - now the latest numbers have it confirmed. Among the top 10 fastest growing Start Ups in Germany in terms of headcount were mainly firms...?Read more