Brill Power raises $10.5m in latest funding round

The company will use the funding to support team growth, new product development, and to expand its presence in static energy storage and the automotive sectors.

The round was led by new investors - Legal & General Capital and Barclays Sustainable Impact Capital Programme and supported by Brill’s existing investors including Oxford Science Enterprises, Oxford Investment Consultants and Oxford University. Shell Ventures and Climate KIC have also become shareholders.

Battery management systems (BMS) ensure batteries operate safely and effectively and are characterised as being active or passive.

According to Brill, active balancing battery management systems are costly and not a scalable proposition for mass application, whereas more affordable passive balancing solutions introduce operating inefficiencies and safety considerations into battery control.

Brill Power’s Active Loading method uses proprietary algorithms that determine the state of health and power capability of every parallel-connected cell block in the battery with novel control circuitry to regulate current. Stronger cell blocks are exposed to higher currents and weaker ones to lower currents to ensure maximum energy extraction from each individual cell during discharge cycles. Consequently, no single cell becomes the limiting factor in energy storage capacity, power capability or lifetime of the battery.

In a statement, Dr Christoph Birkl, Brill Power’s CEO said, “We have a ground-breaking commercial product in the marketplace and a pipeline of new developments and products to address the stationary energy storage and automotive markets. Our progress and our potential has attracted an impressive cadre of both existing and new investors.”

Birkl continued: “We now have the means to act on the opportunity to offer the market a step-change in improvements for zero-emissions technologies - for the benefit of our investors, our customers and also the community we serve.”

Brill Power said it will now double its team across engineering and commercial operations, and expand its product range for static energy storage and for the world’s largest battery market – electric vehicles - based on projects completed with Aston Martin, AMTE Power and Delta Cosworth. Finally, the funding will support the next phase in the development of the company’s data platform (BrillAnalytics) to help customers monitor and predict battery safety, health and performance data remotely.

John Bromley, managing director, Clean Energy at Legal & General Capital said, "As we grow our climate and clean energy platform, investing in Brill Power is an exciting move into energy storage technologies that are crucial to enable an increase of renewables on the power grid, electrification of transport, and to power our homes, businesses and key infrastructure. Through extended lifetimes, improved safety, and waste reduction, Brill Power’s work is setting a new standard for how to store and use clean power to accelerate progress to our net zero emissions goals.”