Who is funding grid energy storage startups?

The cleantech funding landscape has changed significantly over the past ten years.

To figure out who is funding grid energy storage today, I went through the 200 companies that are active in grid energy storage, and researched, for each one of them, who had raised funds in the past five years (since 2009), and from which sources.

To ensure that the funding source was still accessible, I tracked each funding source, and listed the last year in which it funded an energy storage company. When the source indicated that it had moved away from energy storage, I listed the change of focus as well.

I also researched a set of energy storage companies that do not focus on grid storage, but whose technologies are relevant to grid storage, and added their funding sources to the list.

The outcome is an exhaustive energy storage funding directory of the 170+ sources that have funded the last five years of grid energy storage startups.

I grouped these funding sources in what I felt were logical categories.

Traditional investors are venture capital or investment firms, which may have a focus on energy, on cleantech, on materials (for energy storage companies that work on materials), on software (for energy storage companies that focus on software), or on none of these. I listed separately industrial corporations that have invested (often for strategic reasons) in energy storage, either directly or through a venture capital arm.

Less traditional sources of funding may be giving grants or loans to energy storage companies in one form or another, may be formed as NGOs or semi-governmental organizations, or may be non-traditional investors. There is a surprisingly large number of them. I grouped them in several categories: sources of outright grants (of which the most famous is ARPA-e), export development banks, developing world banks, and crowd-sourced investing.

In the next few weeks, I will publish an in-depth analysis of this new energy storage funding directory. So keep checking!

Energy storage funding directory

Did we miss some sources of funding, possibly for funding rounds that were not publicized (we certainly did…)? Request us to add to or edit the directory here.

The energy storage directory has taken a life of its own. I am using it much more than I expected. Its focus keeps on expanding, through both requests and needs of my own: it is now tracking approximately 200 companies. Two week ago, Tim Probert asked that I add a section for energy storage systems integrators (ESS) — he made me realize how much better the taxonomy would be, and what I had missed the first time around.

So here is my first shot at an ESS integrators directory, as a section of of the full energy storage directory. Since I focus on renewable energy storage, I listed players with stationary applications dealing with grid scale or grid edge storage.  I am not planning to list local or regional integrators.

Let me know what you think, how it could be made better, and who I should add. I am sure I missed significant players. I included a request form allowing listing requests at the bottom of the list.

ESS integrators directory