Sonnen secures €60 million investment from Shell Ventures

In its latest financing round, sonnen has secured €60 million of capital from a group of investors. Shell Ventures led the group and is now an active stakeholder in Sonnen, as was announced on Wednesday. All previously existing investors contributed to the round.

The resulting €60 million of capital is, according to sonnen, earmarked to pursue plans to expand in the U.S. and Australian markets.

Sonnen has indicated that it has signed an agreement regarding future cooperation with the renewable energy section of the Anglo-Dutch oil company, Shell Ventures. The companies aim to identify and exploit synergies between the two companies.

In an interview with pv magazine, sonnen’s Chief Global Sales & Marketing Officer Philipp Schröder said that the two companies will integrate Shell Ventures’ EV-charging solution into sonnen’s virtual power plant (VPP). This is despite sonnen having already developed and launched its own EV charging solution. The sonnen VPP solution was intentionally designed to be technologically agnostic, reports Schröder.

The second important aspect of sonnen’s cooperation with Shell Venture is the latter company’s solid global footing. Leveraging this, sonnen seeks to expand its market share in the regions in which it is already active. These include the U.S. and Australia, in which sonnen launched its sonnenCommunity last year.

The precise distribution among the different investors, was not disclosed. However, upon request sonnen confirmed that Shell Ventures provided the largest figure under the investment round. Schröder highlighted further that despite that it is an important signal to see that all previously existing investors, such as GE Ventures, Envision and E-Capital contributed to the round.

Aside from the sonnenCommunity, the German Company has launched several pilot projects in cooperation with transmission and distribution grid operators. The projects are trialing the provision grid services through aggregating distributed PV-hybrid systems. The provision of grid services, along with its VPP, are areas that sonnen reports it is particularly focused.

In recent years, sonnen has secured capital approximating €180 million, across several funding rounds.