Leading European battery manufacturer, Germany’s sonnen Group, has announced it has successfully completed a new financing round with a total equity amount of USD $85 million (~ AUD $111 million).
The financing will go toward activities including the development of its sonnenCommunity energy sharing platform further expansion of its energy storage business in the United States, Australia, UK and Italy.
“We want to become the energy supplier of the future. Fast growth and leadership in innovation are the keys to reaching this goal”, stated Christoph Ostermann, CEO of sonnen Group.
SonnenCommunity consists of sonnenBatterie owners who buy and sell self-generated energy with other members of the community. The price is set substantially cheaper than conventionally sourced electricity in Germany – around 23 euro cents per kilowatt hour.
” Since you are exclusively using energy from the community, there is no need for a conventional energy provider anymore,” says the sonnenCommunity page.
The two new investment partners, Envision Energy and Thomas Putter; former CEO and ex-Chairman of Allianz Capital Partners, join existing investors including Inven Capital and GE Ventures.
“The future of energy is clean, decentralized and digital. With its sonnenCommunity platform and smart sonnenBatterie technology, sonnen already demonstrates how our energy infrastructure will look tomorrow,” said Lei Zhang, CEO of Envision Energy.
In other recent news from sonnen, the company is apparently eyeing an IPO in “one or two years” reports Bloomberg.
It’s been a very busy week for sonnen. Late last week, the company announced it had been included in MIT Technology Review’s “50 Smartest Companies 2016” list and also inked a partnership with AutoGrid, a U.S. energy services software developer.
Sonnen has evolved to become the largest home battery supplier in Europe and sonnen battery systems are now also available in Australia.
Compatible with all solar power systems and based on a modular design, the home energy storage solution is available in capacities of 4kWh – 16kWh capacity in 2kWh increments. The company offers a market-leading 10 year/10,000 cycle warranty; which is close to 3 full cycles daily.
