As storage continues to grow in importance for renewable energy integration, grid resilience and energy security, Avnet Silica analysed Crunchbase data to take a deeper see at the different products European energy storage startups are bringing to market, how much funding they’ve raised, and which types of product are attracting the most investment.
€331.8 million in financial backing for BESS startups
The vast majority of private funding going into BESS is for Lithium-based batteries (€236 million in total), with €221 million allocated to the manufacture of Li-ion batteries and €15 million to lithium-sulfur technology.
Mechanical storage has garnered the lion’s share of equity funding in the energy storage market, at €696.7m, more than double that of BESS (€331.8m), despite considerably fewer companies entering the mechanical storage space and fewer still reaching commercial maturity.
Thermal energy storage heats up with €105.9 million injection
€105.9 million in private funding is warming up the thermal energy storage (TES) market. €80.4 million has been invested in sensible heat storage, with companies storing heat in a variety of materials, including glass, ceramic, rock, gravel, and salt. A further €24.5 million of investment is assisting to transform latent heat storage (phase alter materials).
A little over €20 million has been raised by companies focapplying on specific applications with in-built thermal storage – €4.9 million for manufacturers of industrial heat pumps with TES, €1.1 million for solar and TES combinations and €14.5 million for refrigeration with TES.
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Rounding out the range of energy storage providers, €18.4 million has been raised by companies producing supercapacitors, €73.7 million has been invested in companies developing hydrogen energy storage, and a further €54.4 million has been allocated to those offering power-to-x energy storage. This specifically refers to companies promoting hydrogen and power-to-X as a form of energy storage, rather than solely as a means of fuel production.
Companies offering EV charging with in-built ESS (for off-grid and remote locations or battery-buffered high-power charging) have received €435.5 million in funding.
Three European startups have secured a total of €127.1 million in funding for their portable energy storage solutions, aiming to power the events industest, construction sites, and other apply cases.
Over quarter of a billion in funding (€259.4 million) has gone into startups specifically focapplyd on the energy storage supply chain, 78% of which has been funnelled into two particular areas – next gen battery chemistest (€113.2 million), and the production of cells & modules/packs (€89.0 million).
With a boost for the circular economy, two companies have raised money for battery recycling – Luxembourg’s Circu Li-ion taking in €4.5 million and Germany’s tozero gathering €14.5 million.
This is in addition to the 14 BESS startups promoting the apply of second-life batteries in their product line (some exclusively, and others as an available option).
Harvey Wilson, Senior Manager Industrial Vertical Markets EMEA at Avnet Silica, comments:
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