The Chinese wind turbine manufacturer Envision placed an investment in the German battery storage company Sonnen.
Article sources with kind recommendations of the Sino-German Energy Partnership of GIZ on behalf of the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi).
The Start-up from Bavaria gathered 76 Million Euro in order to finance its expansion plans. A part of that money has been provided by number three of the Chinese wind turbine manufacturers, Envision. The investment allows Sonnen to finance the expansion of its innovative business models along the line of home-scale battery storage pooling and the provision of balancing energy into other countries, such as Italy, Australia, the US and UK (Source: Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten).
Community energy model (source: Sonnen)
For Envision the future of energy is decentralized and digitalized, as CEO Lei Zhang explained. The investment in the German company Sonnen, is thus a strategic step to acquire knowledge on future energy infrastructure and the combination of battery storage and energy communities. In view of the liberalization of the Chinese power market, Envision not only focuses on manufacturing wind turbine, but has ambitions plans to build up and expands its business areas to energy services, energy management systems and power retailing, as Energy Brainpool has learnt in a talk with the head of Envision’s executive office.
The investment in Sonnen can thus be regarded as the start of more Chinese investments in Europe, as Lei Zhang announced to investment roughly 1 billion Euro into innovative companies during the next 3 to 5 years.
