UK-based energy storage company Certain Energy has raised £10 million in Series A funding, led by the British Business Bank, which invested £3.5 million. The round also saw participation from Centrica Energy, Ceres Power Holdings, and Temasek Trust’s Catalytic Capital for Climate and Health (C3H).
- Founded in 2017 as a spin-off from Imperial College London, Certain Energy develops manganese flow batteries for long-duration energy storage, enabling renewable electricity to be stored and released when wind and solar generation is low.
- Its systems are designed to stabilise electricity grids, reduce renewable energy curtailment, and decrease reliance on gas-fired peaker plants.
- The company uses manganese-based electrolytes, which it says offer a more cost-effective alternative to vanadium. Energy capacity can also be scaled by increasing the size of the electrolyte tanks, enabling storage from hours to days.
- Certain Energy says its technology achieves more than 75% round-trip efficiency and is designed for a 20-year operating life with limited capacity degradation. It also claims its approach could bring marginal storage costs to around one-tenth of comparable vanadium flow batteries.
Details of the deal
- The funding will support the development of Certain Energy’s first grid-connected MWh-class system in India, expansion of its UK research facility, and the development of a supply chain for commercial projects.
- The company will also use the capital to prepare for volume production and wider market deployment, advancing its technology toward commercial-scale energy storage.
