A Newcastle company has won a top international accolade for a Belgian-based energy storage project which uses converted battery packs from Renault cars.
Connected Energy is one of the winners of the prestigious PLMA Technology Pioneer Awards for its E-Stor system.
The system, which installed at the Umicore Industrial site in Belgium, uses batteries taken from Renault’s Kangoo utility electric vehicles. Their second life as part of the stationary energy storage system is expected to extend their life by as much as seven years.
The PLMA awards recognise industry leaders who during the last year created innovative ideas, methods, programmes, and technologies that manage end use loads to meet peak demand needs and support successful grid integration of distributed energy resources.
Connected Energy – which is based at the Helix site in Newcastle but also operates a technical centre near Norwich - specialises in developing energy storage solutions that use electric vehicle batteries which have ended their traditional first life.
The 48 batteries in the award winning E-STOR have a combined energy storage capacity of 720 kWh and can deliver 1.2 MW in power.
The Belgian system provides revenue generation and power quality management for global materials technology and recycling group Umicore, which also recycles EV batteries.
Mark Bailey, Connected Energy’s chief commercial officer, said: “We’re delighted with this new award win. Being recognised by our peers is always an honour.
“If we can encourage more firms to look more into the circular economy and find new ways to maximise value from already extracted natural resources then we’re really pleased.”
The win follows swiftly on the back of Connected Energy being presented with the SME Innovation Award from the North East Automotive Alliance in February, which recognised the company for its ground-breaking work and the impact it’s having in the wider market.
Connected Energy is on a high after announcing a recruitment drive in January on the back of a £5m investment in 2019.
It has been named as one of the UK’s fastest growing businesses by SyndicateRoom and independent research agency Beauhurst in December, and was presented with a Japan Energy Challenge award in October.
