In this year like no other, solar, storage and cleantech investors are finding reasons for optimism — driven, in part, by an incoming Biden administration aiming to enact a $2 trillion climate plan.

Here’s a rundown of these year-end investments.

Investments in solar software and CSP
$50 million for solar software: It took a pandemic, but the U.S. residential solar (and storage) industry has finally figured out how to lower customer acquisition costs — move everything online. Aurora Solar, a SaaS startup developing software that enables solar installers and financiers to design and sell residential solar remotely, raised $50 million in a Series B led by Iconiq Growth, along with existing investors Energize Ventures, Fifth Wall, and Pear VC. This brings the company’s total investment to over $70 million. Aurora is aiming to shift the solar industry from manual and in-person processes — to doing everything online. Aurora’s software lets solar installers perform remote solar shading analysis, design solar and storage rooftop systems, forecast energy generation, calculate savings, and produce sales proposals with financing choices. BloombergNEF is confident that Americans will install a record 3 GW of solar on their homes this year and 3.6 GW will be installed in 2021. Other solar software investments this year included Terabase Energy and Station A.

$39 million for next-gen concentrated solar power: Bill Gross’s CSP startup Heliogen received $39 million, to “develop, build, and operate a supercritical carbon dioxide power cycle integrated with thermal energy storage, heated by concentrated solar thermal energy supplied by a newly built heliostat field,” according to the DOE website. Heliogen’s proposed CSP plant uses sCO2 — essentially, CO2 halfway between gas and fluid — instead of steam to generate power. Since 2007, the DOE has provided about $575 million in support for CSP research. Heliogen is backed by Bill Gates, Steve Case and cancer drug entrepreneur Patrick Soon-Shiong. (reporting by K Kaufmann)

247Solar, an MIT-spinoff, and microturbine maker Capstone Turbine tested a commercial turbine that can generate electricity using hot air at atmospheric pressure, without combustion — made possible by a heat exchanger using a nickel-chromium-aluminum-iron alloy engineered for operation at very high temperatures. The plant is driven by a CSP system that heats air to a high-enough temperature to drive the turbine to produce electricity. According to the company, the hot-air-driven Brayton Cycle system “operates at atmospheric pressure and requires no steam, molten salts, or heat transfer oils.” The system stores up to 20 hours of energy as heat, using ceramic pellets instead of molten salts. Source: 247Solar

Investing across the energy storage value stack
Li-Cycle, the largest lithium-ion battery recycler in North America, closed a Series C funding round led by Moore Strategic Ventures to fund development of its Rochester, New York hub. Terms were not disclosed. Li-Cycle CEO Ajay Kochhar said, “Without sustainable and economically viable lithium-ion battery recycling, we believe it’s likely that electric vehicle proliferation will be substantially hindered.” Li-Cycle claims that its recycling process enables recoveries of at least 95% of all materials found in lithium-ion batteries, compared to the industry norm of less than 50%.

The UK Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) has approved the construction of the biggest battery storage project in the UK, and one of the largest such projects in the world, the company developing the site said on Monday.

InterGen, an energy company headquartered in Edinburgh, has received the green light to build the US$267 million (£200 million) project in southern England. The project is expected to provide at least 320MW/640MWh of capacity, with the potential to expand to 1.3GWh – more than ten times the size of the largest battery currently in operation in the UK and set to be one of the world’s largest, InterGen said.

The battery storage project, which will be built at DP World London Gateway on the Thames Estuary, dwarfs any similar projects currently in operation in the UK, with the largest operational project currently at 75MWh.

“It is also likely to be one of the biggest batteries anywhere in the world,” InterGen said.

Construction on the Gateway project is expected to start in 2022 and become operational in 2024.

InterGen is also exploring the option to develop another large battery project at its site in Spalding, Lincolnshire, which would be 175MW / 350MWh. The planning permissions are already in place for the project in Lincolnshire in east England.

Battery storage will be essential to the UK’s net-zero ambitions and its target to become a global leader in offshore wind energy, powering every home in the country with wind energy by 2030, as Prime Minister Boris Johnson said in early October.

Battery storage will also be crucial to advancing renewable energy in other parts of the world. Earlier this month, French company Neoen said that it would build an even bigger, 300-MW/450-MWh, battery storage system in Australia, in partnership with Tesla. The Victorian Big Battery in Australia, one of the world’s largest batteries, will be delivered together with Tesla and network partner AusNet Services.