Scottish battery technology company Dukosi has secured an additional £1.2 million of funding to accelerate the development and commercialisation of its smart battery technology for high efficiency automotive, renewable, grid and local energy storage.
The latest investment round for Dukosi – based at the Bush Technopole, near Edinburgh – follows a £1 million investment last year from existing shareholders, led by the venture capitalist IP Group, with Par Equity and the Scottish Investment Bank.
Dukosi is a pioneer in battery cell intelligence for high-performance, large battery applications including battery-powered vehicles (BPVs), grid, renewables and local energy storage.
Its Evoic technology was developed in response to growing market requirements for improved performance, flexible design, reduced costs and battery intelligence without compromising on safety. Dukosi electronics and software supervises and controls high performance battery systems for electric and hybrid cars as well as grid energy storage and renewables applications such as wind and solar farms.
The battery management systems ensure the safe operation of large batteries, optimise their operational performance and maintain the durability of the battery cells over many years, or even decades, and thousands of charge cycles.
Their disruptive technology is predicted to have a positive impact on the Lithium Ion (Li-ion) battery cell market that is forecasted by Frost & Sullivan to reach $75 billion by 2020 with an annual growth rate of around 57%.
The addressable market for battery management technology tracks this market and is predicted to reach $6 billion by 2020.
Dr Gordon Povey, Chief Executive, Dukosi, said: “We are seeing significant growth in the lithium-ion battery markets worldwide largely driven by the increasing sales of electric and hybrid cars. The demand for grid and renewables battery storage is also showing evidence of very strong growth.
“Every large lithium-ion battery system requires battery management technology and over the last two years we have been intensively developing our unique world leading smart battery management technology that has now been demonstrated in a road-going electric vehicle. We will use this investment to enhance our technology, orientate the company for volume production and build our commercial pipeline.”
Chairman Clive Scrivener added: “By adding advanced cell modelling and power electronics enhancements, Dukosi is meeting the rapidly growing demands of the automotive and static energy storage industries for more efficient technology. Our disruptive, distributed, cell level approach enables the company to deploy ever more cost effective battery solutions to support an accelerating low carbon economy.”
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