Residential battery storage firm Moixa is working on a major project to expand electric vehicle smart charging and vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology in the UK.
Moixa, which won UK government funding in 2017 to expand its ‘GridShare’ batteries aggregator technology, is preparing a “scale proposition” for the project, BEST Battery Briefing has learned.
Moixa co-founder and chief technology officer Chris Wright told BBB the company was not yet able to divulge details. “I am limited to what I can say, but we have a big project in the UK that will demonstrate control of EV smart charging and also V2G technology.”
The UK-based company has already exported its GridShare platform to Japan and secured investments from leading Japanese companies and utilities.
In 2017, Moixa secured a total of £2.5 million ($3.2m) in new investment with backers including Japan’s Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) and capital investment firm First Imagine Ventures.
Last year, Moixa agreed to export its battery technology to Japan under a partnership agreement with the country’s Itochu trading house— a Fortune 500 company.
Moixa is already installing its lithium-ion phosphate battery systems on the Isles of Scilly, off the southwest English coast, as part of a ‘smart energy test bed’ project led by Hitachi Europe.
Wright said Britain’s “culture of ingenuity and entrepreneurship” was increasingly attractive to Japanese investors.
His comments came as Japanese power sector investment group Jera and Tepco Power Grid agreed to invest up to £25m in another UK battery storage company, Zenobe Energy (formerly known as Battery Energy Storage Solutions).
Zenobe owns and operates a portfolio of battery storage assets in the UK with a capacity of around 73MW. The company said it is “expanding into other new business areas, such as enabling the charging of commercial electric vehicles, and supporting commercial and industrial companies and other utilities”.
