Energy storage (2024)

1. Changing chemistry

   As well as the companies working on manufacturing energy storage systems, Europe’s home to startups iterating on the composition of cells themselves, like Sweden’s Altris, which is developing sodium-ion cathode active materials production for batteries. It says it can make batteries that are cheaper and emit less CO2.

   France’s Tiamat is also making salt-based batteries. Sodium is more abundant and cheaper but its energy density is relatively low, meaning batteries using salt need to be bigger and heavier than their lithium counterparts.

   Other companies are working on solid-state batteries. They use a solid electrolyte rather than the liquid or gel electrolyte found in traditional lithium-ion batteries. Proponents say that it can mean a longer battery life and more compact design. Solid-state batteries are not yet available on the market but companies like Dutch startup LionVolt are working on developing them.

2. Competition from China

   European companies have long struggled to compete with Chinese companies on EV battery manufacturing. The country dominates the supply chain and produces the majority of the world’s EV batteries.

   It’s a similar situation with energy storage batteries. Chinese battery manufacturer CATL produces more than 40% of the global market share, accounting for 17.6% of its sales, up from 12.5% in 2021. Rival Chinese maker BYD has also seen an increase in storage battery sales: it sold 57% more capacity in 2023 than the year prior.

   These companies are innovating fast on storage batteries too: last week, BYD announced a sodium-ion grid scale battery system, which it said had the “world’s highest performance”.

3. The home revolution

   As well as grid-scale battery storage, companies are working on solutions that use parts of the domestic energy infrastructure to store excess capacity. Sweden’s Tibber integrates customers’ electric vehicles to balance the grid — they can act as mini batteries dispatching and storing energy — along with heat pumps, solar panels and domestic batteries.

   The UK’s Octopus Energy is working on similar tech: earlier this year, it announced a partnership with China’s BYD to use EVs to store energy.

4. Second life batteries

   Batteries are made up of critical minerals. Supply is short, so companies able to recycle old batteries and get the materials back to a state where they can be used are doing well — Germany’s Cylib, a battery recycling startup, raised a €55m Series A co-led by World Fund and Porsche Ventures earlier this year, for example.

   Other companies are repurposing old car batteries for energy storage. The UK’s Allye takes batteries from old Teslas and forms energy storage systems.

Who early stage startups are up against