Success! Less than a week after launching its third Crowdcube initiative, UK-based Powervault successfully secured its £750,000 goal.
As previously reported, Powervault’s product reportedly reduces electricity bills and helps customers during black-outs. According to the company, the government says that energy storage is a game-changing technology which could save the UK £8bn/year as part of a “smart power revolution.” The product presents its cloud-connected smart grid energy storage system.
The company shared:
“Powervault is selling a cloud-connectedhome energy storage appliance, which our calculations estimate can lower electricity bills by up to 20%. The product stores low cost electricity from solar panels or the national grid, then releases this stored energy when household demand peaks. Powervault is initially targeting 800,000 homes with solar PV panels through our established network of resellers. We’ve achieved 300% of our budget for the first half of the 2016 financial year, in active discussions with national solar operators and utilities and we’ve made our first overseas sale.”
Since April 2015, Powervault achieved the following:
- Won “Innovator of the year” and “Solar PV Innovation of the Year” at the BusinessGreen technology awards.
- Positioned Powervault as a UK market leader, generating high profile media coverage (Guardian, Sunday Times, FT, Telegraph, BBC Radio 5).
- Started commercial discussions with Nissan to incorporate second life electric vehicle batteries into future versions of our product. Our ambition is to launch the world’s greenest and cheapest closed-loop lithium ion product later this year.
- Developed an improved lithium-ion battery version of our product incorporating cloud based time-of-use tariff management and reducing manufacture costs.
- Outsourced manufacturing.
- Hired six new staff (including Technical Director, Commercial Director, Business Development Manager).
- Secured a commitment from a large utility to perform a trial of Powervault systems and are in early discussions with other utilities.
- Partnered with Open Energi to evaluate providing services to support the national grid.
Funds from this new initiative will go towards sales and marketing (13%), working capital (12%), technical (36%) and general expenses (39%). During a recent interview with Crowdcube, founder Joe Warren revealed details about the company since its first campaign:
“Powervault has been transformed since the first Crowdfunding round. We’ve significantly reduced our manufacturing costs and have outsourced manufacturing, rather than assembling the units in house. Building on the stalwart support of our first solar installer, Greenman Solar, our sales have grown substantially and we now are now selling products through four national distributors and many solar installers. Our work to develop major partnerships has seen us partner with Open Energi and Tempus (another #FundedClub business), to help us increase customer savings and provide revenue streams from the ‘smart grid’, with other partnerships in the pipeline. We’re also really excited to be working with Nissan on commercialisation of what we hope to be the world’s cheapest and greenest home energy storage product based on second life Electric Vehicle batteries.”
He also noted why Powervault returned to Crowdcube for the third time:
“We’ve raised funds with Crowdcube twice before and each time it’s surpassed our expectations. In the first round we met our modest £150k target just eight hours after launching – a record for Cleantech crowdfunding – and the second time we reached our £350k target and overfunded to our £750k maximum in just four days. Within four hours of the public launch of this raise, we’ve passed the £500k mark and are confident that our pitch will continue to do well this time, based on our ambitious future plans supported by our strong management team.”
In regards to Powervault’s future, Warren added:
“Powervault has found itself ideally placed to benefit from a revolution in the way that electricity is generated and consumed – a revolution which should drive the electricity system towards cheaper and greener methods of managing and generating power. With the investment from this round we hope to position the business for scaling by signing deals with utilities, large partners and those with international reach. We’ll reduce product costs further by incorporating innovations like second life batteries, and increase value to our customers by implementing “smart grid” features such as time of use tariffs.”
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