Energy technology company EcoJoule Energy is gunning it with the appointment of three new executives to power its national and international expansion strategy.
The company produces a pole-mounted community battery energy storage system (BESS) that offers consumers a paid subscription to store their access to solar energy into a local battery to be retrieved when needed.
It claims the technology is cheaper than home batteries, allows for load diversity as not all consumers use energy at the same time, as well as provides grid support and high-level virtual power plant functions for grid providers and retailers when needed.
“As grids face greater volatility, our technology offers utilities a cost-effective alternative to traditional infrastructure upgrades – and that’s why interest in our solutions is accelerating both here in Australia and overseas,” chief executive officer Wishart said.
He said the Queensland based company was seeing unprecedented demand for the product and was now “entering the next phase.”.
“When we founded EcoJoule Energy in 2014, our vision was clear – to build Australian-designed and manufactured solutions that could strengthen electricity networks and accelerate the transition to clean energy.”
Wishart said earlier this year, the company had secured $15 million in growth capital, which will go towards scaling its operation and expanding internationally into the UK, Europe, Southeast Asia and South America, “after a decade of bootstrapping”.
“That support, alongside a Clean Energy Finance Corporation’s $3 million commitment, puts us in a strong position to meet rising global demand.”
With the appointment of the new executive members, Philip Keogan as its strategic advisor for growth, Martin Cottrell as its head of technical sales and Kieran Thompson as its customer service manager, the company will have 25 staff.
Keogan was formerly the chief commercial officer for energy solution providers Wattwatchers and the executive general manager at Sunverge Energy and Ergon Energy, as well as general manager at Jemena.
Cottrell said he was “returning to [his] roots in energy and power systems engineering. He was most recently a consultant at AI solutions firm Daitum and a senior associate at The Energy Project. Thompson is a mechatronics engineer who has been an IOT engineer at energy monitoring systems provider LPA Energy Group as well as a technical support engineer at load management provider Vertron.
“We’ve built a team that is passionate about innovation and committed to solving one of the toughest challenges in the energy transition – how to stabilise networks that are becoming increasingly decentralised,” Wishart said.
“The demand for our EcoVAR and EcoSTORE products is being driven by the surge in rooftop solar, distributed energy resources and electric vehicle charging.”
Some of the company’s current clients include Endeavour Energy, Essential Energy, Ausgrid and AusNet Services.