Cheesecake Energy Wins OZEV Funding

We’re delighted to announce that Cheesecake Energy (CEL) has been awarded grant funding for our eTanker storage solution by the Office for Zero Emission Vehicles (OZEV) in partnership with Innovate UK.

The funding has been awarded as part of the Government’s £20 million transitioning towards Net Zero (TZEV) research and development competition to power up the electric vehicle (EV) revolution.

This financial backing will support our mission to unlock a fast and affordable transition to a low-carbon energy future by providing our affordable and climate-friendly energy storage systems to support EV charging.

As more people switch to EVs, cities will need to think about how to provide charge to all those new vehicles. Retrofitting petrol stations and parking spaces with EV charging points is only part of the solution. Many of the existing petrol stations or new sites looking to install EV chargers will discover that the grid connection available cannot handle those levels of power. In many cases, upgrading the connection isn’t feasible as it is a very lengthy and expensive job.

Energy storage can help solve this issue. Charging stations can charge their energy store when there are no EVs around at a rate that is manageable for their grid connection. When called upon, the energy store can provide charge at a much faster rate than the grid connection alone would be able to. This approach allows installing EV chargers without upgrading the grid connection and it also allows the stations to reduce their electricity costs by charging the store at off-peak times.

CEL’s eTanker system takes electricity from the grid and stores a part of it as heat and another part as pressurised air. The system uses electrically driven ex-service truck engines as the power-conversion machines for putting electricity into storage and withdrawing it when needed. The system aims to deliver storage capabilities at half the cost of battery equivalents, while lasting much longer and having a much lower environmental footprint.

In partnership with new product development and manufacturing specialists Productiv, CEL will use the OZEV funding to reduce the production cost of various subsystems and components, paving the way for manufacturing scale-up, and ultimately helping the UK to boost its uptake of EVs.

With eTanker in the market place, EV charging solution providers will be able to incorporate it into their customer offerings displacing unsustainable lithium-ion based products. It is expected that this could lead to over 400 high-value UK manufacturing jobs within 5 years, and a $1bn export opportunity by 2030.

Commenting on the grant funding, CEL CEO Mike Simpson said: “We expect our technology to play a key role in ensuring that the UK’s energy infrastructure meets demand in the future as we transition to Net Zero. We welcome the funding from OZEV and look forward to working with our partners, Productiv to develop our eTanker storage solution further in the coming months.”

Anand Lakhani, Chief Executive of Productiv said: “Productiv are delighted to be a strategic partner to Cheesecake Energy on the eTanker project. We believe that the strength of Cheesecake Energy’s technology and team, complemented by Productiv’s experience and capabilities, will help to bring this important product to market to support the rollout of EV charge points across the UK.”

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said: “Ahead of major climate summit COP26 this year, investment in exciting projects such as these is key to making the switch to electric vehicles more attractive for drivers than ever before.

Not only will they propel us further towards our Net Zero ambitions, they will also help harness some of the brightest talent in the UK tech industry, encouraging businesses to become global leaders in EV innovation and creating jobs as we build back better.”