We are thrilled to announce our investment in Aed Energy, a long-duration energy storage company combining cost-effective thermal storage with state-of-the-art photovoltaics to build super-cheap, modular electricity storage.
As we’ve said before, for intermittent renewable energy to deliver the majority of our electricity needs we will require the addition of significant long-duration storage to our electricity system. Some of that storage will be added at the grid level, some will sit in front of renewable generation, some will sit with end-users and some will support the operation of micro-grids. Microgrids are sites that are not connected to the grid but have a need for electricity - sometimes industrial sites in remote locations, sometimes like hospitals because they wish to be self-sufficient from flaky national infrastructure and sometimes just because there is no grid! There are a huge number of micro-grids today - the market for microgrids in 2023 was over $30bn. We believe there will be many more as we see industrial growth in developing countries and the 700m people living without electricity today come online.
Aed Energy’s low cost, modular solution, when paired with solar or wind generation, is an ideal candidate to enable these many micro-grids to access consistent, cheap 24/7 electricity. Because not all of the heat energy from Aed Energy’s battery can be turned into electricity, these sites get access to high-temperature heat energy too, useful for industrial heat or district heating. A two-for-one deal!
Rayan, Oliver and Mike are an incredible team with deep expertise in heat management, photovoltaics and renewable energy deployment - the perfect combination to develop and commercialise this technology. We’ve been so impressed with them throughout the investment process and are excited to deepen our partnership after closing the round. Alex from the ZCC team will be joining their board.
We think there are lots of opportunities in this long duration energy storage space, both for heat and electricity across sites with highly variable characteristics, and we are super excited to be making our first investment here with Aed Energy.