The sonnen Group, a provider of intelligent battery storage in Europe, has secured new investment worth US$85 million.
The investment will be used to expand the company’s growth in Germany and deepen its expansion into international markets. It will focus on development of new products such as the energy sharing platform known as the sonnenCommunity and the further expansion of its business in the United States, Australia, UK and Italy, sonnen said.
The new investors include international technology company Envision Energy; and Thomas Putter, former CEO and ex-chairman of Allianz Capital Partners and leading investor in renewable energy technology.
The two partners gain a minority stake in sonnen and join existing investors, viz., eCAPITAL, MVP, SET Ventures, Inven Capital and GE Ventures.
In addition to its high-quality wind turbines, Envision Energy also develops world’s leading intelligent software for the orchestration of the future energy world, which consists of a variety of decentralized energy sources and devices.
“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.
“We want to become the energy supplier of the future. Fast growth and leadership in innovation are the keys to reaching this goal,” says Christoph Ostermann, CEO of sonnen Group. “With Envision Energy, we have gained a strategic investor who shares our vision, supplements our technology and has a strong presence in both the U.S. and Asian markets.”
sonnen develops and manufactures the sonnenBatterie smart energy management systems in Germany and in San José, California. Through its sonnenCommunity, homeowners throughout Germany can produce, store and share their own electricity.
sonnen’s latest development, the sonnenFlat, is the next step in virtual power plants enabling thousands of sonnenBatteries to be aggregated into one large storage pool that provides balancing energy for the powergrid in Germany, the company said.
Rajani Baburajan