Prudent Energy gets $29.5m from Asian investors
Prudent Energy, a US- and Beijing-based energy storage firm, has raised $29.5 million in an investment rounding led by Japan’s Mitsui & Co. and including Vangoo Investment Partners – which is an affiliate of Japan’s Ant Capital Partners - Asia Clean Energy Limited, Paris-based Idinvest Partners, and an undisclosed Korea-based investment group.
Existing investors Draper Fisher Jurvetson, DT Capital Partners, Northern Light Venture Capital and CEL Partners also participated in the financing.
According to Prudent Energy, the funding follows the company's recent sale of an 8-megawatt-hour Vanadium Redox Battery Energy Storage System (VRB-ESS) - which maximizes the efficiency of kilowatt-class installations to multi-megawatt class ones - to the State Grid Corporation of China, as well as systems in Asia, the US and Europe.
Prudent designs and manufactures its VRB-ESS as large-capacity energy storage system that smooths power variations from milliseconds to many hours throughout the day. The company began operations in its current incarnation in January 2009, when predecessor VRB Power, which was listed in Vancouver, sold its patents, equipment and materials to Prudent.
Sequoia Partners and Jafco Ventures have also participated in previous funding rounds.
"Now is the time for Prudent to take advantage of favorable regulatory changes that will help electric power utilities and grid operators use energy storage to optimize traditional power generating capacity, while integrating wind and solar power," Johnson Chiang, Prudent's CEO, said in a statement.
"Most encouraging in this round is that large corporations see both the potential in our technology and more importantly in the company itself - the opportunities are global."
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