Italian start-up Energy Dome has closed a $11 million bridge funding round to continue its goal of deploying utility-scale long-duration CO2 energy storage solutions.
The funding allows the company to place purchase orders for the turbomachinery equipment associated with its 20MW/200MWh, 10-hour duration energy storage projects in advance of a Series B round later this year.
With the closing of this latest convertible round, Energy Dome has now raised nearly $25 million since emerging from stealth mode in February 2020.
The convertible funding was led by the Evolution Fund of CDP Venture Capital, together with existing investor Barclays, through their Sustainable Impact Capital program.
The round was also joined by Swiss family office Novum Capital Partners, an existing shareholder in Energy Dome.
The latest bridging round follows the $11 million Series A funding round last November led by 360 Capital, Barclays, Novum Capital Partners and Third Derivative.
The Series A funding round enabled the company to complete its 2.5MW/4MWh commercial demonstration plant in Sardinia, Italy, in June.
The milestone marked the final de-risking of the CO2 Battery technology as Energy Dome enters the commercial scaling phase.
Energy Dome is now preparing for its first full-scale 20MW/200MWh plant.
Its first commercial project, Commercial Operation Date, is expected to be deployed by the end of 2023.
How the battery works
Energy Dome’s energy storage method uses CO2 as a working fluid in a closed loop to store renewable energy from four to 24 hours and then dispatch it back to the grid when needed, a critical missing piece of the puzzle in the energy transition.
In charging mode, the CO2 is drawn from an atmospheric gasholder, the Dome, compressed and then stored under pressure at ambient temperature in a high density supercritical or liquid state.
When energy is needed, the CO2 is evaporated and expanded into a turbine, and then returned back to the atmospheric gasholder, ready for the next charging cycle.
