Powervault targets UK lead in energy storage with £700,000 investment

British energy storage start-up Powervault is aiming to become the leading energy storage provider in the UK after raising £700,000 through crowd-funding platform Crowdcube.

And the company intends to take on clean energy giant Tesla with a product that is custom-built for UK households with solar installations and the country’s specific energy consumption profiles, which differs to that of average US households.

Powervault took just four days to meet its target investment of £700,000, which included £200,000 from the London Co-Investment Fund and £100,000 from Future Matters.

The company’s aim is to now manufacture and install 50,000 home storage solutions by 2020 and intends to team up with solar PV installers in the UK in order to help meet its target.

Speaking to Solar Power Portal, managing director Joe Warren said partnering with installers was an “obvious route to market” for the firm, adding that it would form part of a “three-pronged attack” to target the UK alongside raising awareness of the benefits of storage technology and investigating alternative distribution methods.

The Powervault comes in different sizes of between 2kWh and 4kWh and has an installed price of between £2,000 and £2,800. The company claims it can be installed by an electrician within an hour and will not require any “major” rewiring of a household in order to be fitted.

Warren also expects costs to come down in the next five years as battery technology becomes more affordable and the company is able to exploit economies of scale, but he believes the product’s UK-focused design will set it aside from its counterparts.

“We've designed our product specifically for British homeowners with solar, so there are different tariff structures and different energy consumption profiles in other countries that might make different configurations more suitable for different territories.

“All we're going to focus on doing is listening to the needs of British households with solar PV and designing our product to meet their needs. That's the approach we're going to take, and we're confident that we can succeed on that basis,” Warren said.