Certain Energy Closes £10 Million Series A for Manganese Flow Batteries, Testing India Use Case

Certain Energy, a UK-based energy storage company, has closed a £10 million, approximately $13.6 million, Series A funding round for its manganese flow battery technology, addressing the growing need for long-duration energy storage capable of bridging renewable energy's variable generation profile into the more predictable, dispatchable power supply that electricity grids require to maintain reliable operation as they incorporate increasing shares of solar and wind generation capacity. The company's specific focus on manganese-based flow battery chemistry positions it within a category of long-duration storage technology that has attracted growing investor interest as an alternative to the lithium-ion battery technology that has dominated shorter-duration grid storage applications but faces meaningful technical and cost limitations when applied to the considerably longer storage durations that full grid decarbonisation increasingly requires.

Flow battery technology stores energy within liquid electrolyte solutions housed in external tanks, an architectural approach that allows storage capacity and power output to be scaled independently of one another, in contrast to conventional battery technology where energy capacity and power output remain more tightly coupled to the physical battery cell design itself. This independent scalability makes flow battery technology particularly well suited to long-duration storage applications, where a grid operator or renewable energy developer needs to store substantial energy capacity for extended discharge periods, a use case that has become increasingly important as renewable energy penetration grows and grids require storage solutions capable of shifting solar generation from daytime production peaks into evening and overnight demand periods, or storing wind generation across multi-day periods of variable wind conditions. Manganese specifically offers potential cost and supply chain advantages relative to some alternative flow battery chemistries that rely on vanadium or other less abundant and more geographically concentrated raw materials, a consideration that has grown increasingly important for energy storage technology developers seeking to build supply chains resilient to the kind of critical mineral supply concentration risks that have drawn growing policy attention across multiple countries' energy security strategies in recent years.

Certain Energy's decision to develop an active use case in India specifically reflects the substantial and rapidly growing addressable market that India's renewable energy sector represents for long-duration storage technology, given the country's ambitious renewable energy capacity addition targets and the corresponding grid integration challenges that rapidly scaling solar and wind generation capacity has created for Indian grid operators seeking to maintain reliable power supply while incorporating an increasingly variable generation mix. India's specific grid characteristics, including significant seasonal and daily demand variability alongside its enormous solar generation potential, create particularly compelling technical and commercial conditions for long-duration storage technology capable of addressing the multi-hour storage duration gap that shorter-duration lithium-ion battery storage alone cannot fully address. The UK's broader energy storage and grid technology startup ecosystem has grown considerably over recent years, benefiting from the country's own ambitious renewable energy transition targets and correspondingly strong domestic demand for grid-scale storage technology, providing companies like Certain Energy with a supportive home market from which to develop and validate technology before pursuing international expansion into markets like India that offer substantially larger addressable market scale given the sheer magnitude of renewable energy capacity these larger, faster-growing markets are adding.

The £10 million Series A round provides Certain Energy with capital to advance its manganese flow battery technology from its current development stage toward the kind of commercial-scale deployment and validation that long-duration storage technology typically requires to achieve broader grid operator and renewable energy developer adoption, a process that generally demands considerably more extensive field validation and bankability track record than shorter-duration storage technology given the higher capital costs and correspondingly greater project financing scrutiny that long-duration storage installations typically attract from infrastructure investors and grid operators alike. As Certain Energy deploys its Series A capital toward both continued technology development and its active India market use case, the company's ability to demonstrate credible commercial-scale performance and cost competitiveness relative to alternative long-duration storage approaches, including both competing flow battery chemistries and entirely different storage technologies such as compressed air or thermal storage, will determine how successfully the company can translate its early technical validation into the kind of broader commercial deployment that would position it as a meaningful player within the rapidly growing global long-duration energy storage market. Certain Energy's technology development process has reportedly included extensive laboratory-scale validation of its manganese flow battery chemistry before advancing toward the pilot-scale deployment that its Series A capital will help fund, a staged validation approach common among energy storage hardware companies given the considerable capital cost and technical risk associated with scaling novel battery chemistry from laboratory conditions to the commercial-scale deployment that grid operators and renewable energy developers ultimately require before considering broader technology adoption. The company's specific India use case reportedly involves collaboration with a renewable energy developer seeking to demonstrate long-duration storage integration alongside an existing or planned solar generation project, a pilot partnership structure that provides Certain Energy with real-world operating data from Indian grid conditions specifically, data that the company will likely need to support broader commercial deployment claims within the Indian market given how much grid operating conditions, climate factors and regulatory requirements can differ between the UK market where the company originated and the Indian market it is now actively testing. Certain Energy's manufacturing partners for its flow battery components are reportedly based across both the UK and continental Europe, a supply chain structure the company says provides some insulation against the kind of single-country manufacturing concentration risk that has periodically disrupted other battery technology categories' component supply chains. Certain Energy's founding team includes materials scientists with prior academic research backgrounds in alternative battery chemistries, a technical pedigree the company's investors point to as central to its ability to navigate the considerable electrochemistry challenges involved in commercialising a novel flow battery chemistry at the performance and cost levels utility-scale deployment ultimately requires. Certain Energy's near-term roadmap includes plans to expand its pilot programme to a second Indian state, contingent on the results from its initial deployment meeting the performance benchmarks the company and its local partner have set.