RheEnergise, the UK company that is developing HD Hydro, said to be an advanced form of pumped hydro-energy storage to provide medium to long-duration energy storage, has secured a £335 000 equity investment from the Low Carbon Innovation Fund (LCIF2). 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 secured, RheEnergise is seeking to extend it with a second and third tranche of additional investments over the next quarter. It has multiple discussions in train with firm commitments of at least £750 000 in addition to the funding that will be forthcoming through its crowd-funding raise via the Crowdcube platform. This was launched on 7 February and is scheduled to close at the end of February. With the LCIF investment, 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 of funds will support the commercialisation of the company’s storage solution. The deployment of HD Hydro is believed to have the potential to transform the market for medium and long duration storage (LDES) in the UK and overseas and will support the further expansion of renewable power generation across the world. RheEnergise is currently investigating project opportunities in the UK and Ireland, USA and Canada, Chile and Australia.
The HD Hydro grid-scale solution – providing 4 to 16 hours of energy storage in the 10 MW to 100 MW power range – is one of the few LDES solutions that can be scaled rapidly and globally. The global market opportunity for LDES is forecast to be US$ 4 trillion over the next 10-15 years.
Stephen Crosher, chief executive of RheEnergise commented: “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.”
Jim Campion, chair of RheEnergise commented: “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.”
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