RheEnergise has secured a £335,000 equity investment from the Low Carbon Innovation Fund (LCIF2).
The UK clean-technology company is developing HD Hydro, a new and advanced form of pumped hydro-energy storage to provide medium to long-duration energy storage.
LCIF2’s investment provided the cornerstone to RheEnergise’s £720,000 investment round which closed in December. LCIF is a leading investor in low carbon innovators, having made 37 awards to date.
With this investment in the company secured, RheEnergise is seeking to extend this raise with a second and third close of additional investments over the next quarter.
It said it has multiple discussions in train with firm commitments of at least £750,000 in addition to the funding through its crowdfunding raise, via the Crowdcube platform. This was launched last week (7 February 2024) and is scheduled to close at the end of February. With the LCIF commitment, investment from family offices and institutions and the crowd raise, RheEnergise is on course to secure new investment of at least £3m.
The financial injection will support the commercialisation of the company’s storage solution. RheEnergise is currently investigating project opportunities in the UK and Ireland, USA and Canada, Chile and Australia.
The company’s grid-scale technology – providing four to 16 hours of energy storage in the 10MW to 100MW power range – is as one of the few LDES solutions that can be scaled rapidly and globally it said. The global market opportunity for LDES is forecast to be US$4trillion over the next 10-15 years.
“LCIF and the commitments from other investors underlines the exciting growth potential of our HD Hydro technology,” said RheEnergise chief executive Stephen Crosher.
“Over the past 12 months, we have had customer interest in our work from over 30 countries. With this latest investment, along with the additional investment that we will secure, we can accelerate the commercial deployment of our storage solution.”
Chair of RheEnergise and former chief executive of Rezolv Energy Jim Campion added: “My recent experience of deploying funds for giga-watt scale projects points to the absolute need for energy storage to support energy grids across Europe and globally.
“This is why medium and long-term energy storage is going to be the next big thing for the power market and why RheEnergise is getting so much interest.”