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Kees Koolen, the former CEO of Booking.com, an early investor in Uber and several other successful tech companies is in the news again. The owner of clean energy conglomerate, Koolen Industries has made a multi-million investment in a Dutch electricity storage company Elestor BV.
Revolutionary hydrogen bromine flow battery
After years of research and development, Arnhem-based Elestor is at the verge of introducing its revolutionary hydrogen bromine flow battery to the market. This technology is the next step in low-cost electricity storage at scale. In addition, EIT InnoEnergy, early day investor of Elestor, has also co-invested in this round and increased their invested capital considerably.
With the latest investment, the startup from the Netherlands is planning a steep growth phase in virtually every direction. Further, the comapny is also anticipating a commercial launch of Elestor’s storage systems very soon. Kees Koolen said, “Elestor’s storage systems are designed for large scale stationary applications, whereby the storage costs per kWh are impressively low. With Elestor, another exciting storage technology has been added to the group of companies that we invest in.”
He continued, “Since these technologies are complementary and serve a different range of applications, we are together able to deliver turnkey solutions for virtually every demand, in all markets and on a very large scale. The unique Flow Battery technology from Elestor fits extremely well in that strategy.”
Wiebrand Kout (Founder & CTO of Elestor) adds: “Storage against low cost is essential to fulfil this mission and this is where both companies find each other. The Elestor battery is revolutionary because it uses very low cost active materials. Koolen Industries has access to connected technologies. Together, these concepts are key to making renewable energy affordable.”
Guido Dalessi, CEO and one of Elestor’s first investors: “While gearing up for series production, we need to increase investments in staff, test facilities, production engineering and automation. The logical subsequent step is to build a giga-factory for large scale production of HBr flow batteries. Teaming up with Koolen Industries is essential to successfully roll out these plans.”
More ahead!
Elestor plans to deliver their first hydrogen container to the municipal yard in Emmeloord, the Netherlands. Also, they will deliver two systems to locations in Germany and one to an island off the Norwegian coast.
In 2017, Elestor won the European IDTechEx award for ‘Best Technical Development within Energy Storage’. The jury of this award consisted of Fraunhofer Institut, Berlin University and Toyota Motors Europe.
Earlier this year, Koolen Industries invested in Super B, Floading Energy Infra B.V. and Skoon Energy. These companies are specialised in lithium batteries, charging infrastructure and mobile energy storage containers respectively.
Stay tuned to Silicon Canals for more updates in the tech startup world.
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