Certain Energy Series A brings £10M for manganese flow batteries
Certain Energy, formerly RFC Power, will use its £10M Series A for an India grid project, UK R&D expansion and supply-chain work.
By Dominic Okoye · Staff Writer
· 2 min read
Certain Energy has closed a £10 million Series A to commercialise its manganese flow-battery technology, with the government-owned British Business Bank leading the round and contributing £3.5 million. The Certain Energy Series A also included Centrica, Ceres Power Holdings and Temasek Trust’s Catalytic Capital for Climate and Health, or C3H, according to the British Business Bank, Temasek Trust and Imperial College London.
The UK company, previously called RFC Power, was founded in 2017 from Imperial College London research. It is developing long-duration energy storage systems intended to hold renewable electricity for periods when wind and solar generation is low, reducing curtailment and the need for gas-fired peaker plants.
The company did not disclose a valuation, ownership stakes, revenue, customer commitments or headcount in the supplied reports.
What will Certain Energy use its Series A funding for?
Certain Energy plans to use the capital for commercialisation and preparation for volume production. Its stated work includes developing a grid-connected MWh-class system in India, expanding its UK research facility and building a supply chain for replicable commercial projects.
The planned India system is a deployment target, rather than evidence of an operating grid-scale installation. Neither the project’s timing nor capacity beyond the MWh-class description was provided in the supplied reports.
How does Certain Energy’s flow-battery system extend storage duration?
Flow batteries store energy in liquid electrolytes held in external tanks. Certain Energy says it can increase discharge duration by increasing the size of those tanks, enabling storage from hours to days. The design uses manganese, which the company and its investors present as an abundant alternative to materials used in other long-duration storage systems.
Certain Energy says its battery achieves round-trip efficiency above 75%, uses an electrolyte designed for a 20-year operating life with limited capacity degradation, and could lower marginal storage costs to about one-tenth of comparable vanadium flow batteries. Those are company claims reported by the investors and have not been independently validated in the supplied record.
The financing is a conventional Series A use of capital: backing a company’s route from development toward repeatable deployment and production. Series A financing typically funds execution against that next operating milestone, though the round size alone does not establish commercial readiness. For Certain Energy, the disclosed milestones are its India project, UK facility expansion and supply-chain buildout.
For the investors, the bet is on a storage format that can address longer discharge windows through tank sizing. The reports establish the funding and the company’s stated deployment plans, but include no independent technical assessment of its performance, cost or lifecycle claims.
This story draws on original reporting from Tech.eu.
