Home battery pack/EV charger company sonnen secures $70 million investment round led by oil giant Shell

sonnen, a Germany-based home battery pack and electric vehicle charger manufacturer, is making some big moves lately and those moves require money.

The company announced today that it secured a €60 million (~$70 million USD) financing round led by oil giant Shell.

Christoph Ostermann, CEO of sonnen, announced the new round today:

“Growing faster than the energy storage market and establishing new technologies such as energy sharing and our virtual battery pool requires continued investments. We’re very happy to receive the backing of all our investors and the commitment of a major global player like Shell to follow our vision of clean and affordable energy for everyone,”

On top of the invesment, sonnen will partner with Shell’s New Energies division to launch “a strategic cooperation agreement in areas that offer synergies between the two companies”, which will include “innovative integrated energy propositions, enhanced EV charging solutions and the provision of grid services that are based on sonnen’s virtual battery pool.”

It follows sonnen’s release of a free smart home charger that enables owners to always charge their EV from cheap solar power.

Brian Davis, VP Energy Solutions at Shell, commented on today’s announcement:

“The great team at sonnen has succeeded in building a market-leading position in residential storage. This investment enables us to combine Shell’s power business activities with sonnen’s high quality, innovative products and business model to enhance our consumer energy offerings. This is in line with our strategy to partner with leading companies to deliver more and cleaner energy solutions to our customers.“

Just yesterday, we reported on how oil companies have been increasingly interested renewable energy and electric vehicle charging as they start to see electric vehicles slowly taking over the car industry.

BP haw a few initiatives and have invested in an ‘ultra-fast charging battery’ tech earlier this week.

But Shell is arguably leading the charge through its involvement in the new Ionity charging network in Europe, building its own chargers at its own gas stations, and recently acquiring a charging network with over 30,000 chargers.

Now they have a stake in sonnen, which batteries in thousands of homes, mainly in Germany, but also in Australia and now in the US.