This Is How Renewable Energy Will Be Stored in the Future
Hiventures, part of the MFB Group, is providing a total of HUF 1.7 billion in funding to the Pannon Green Power (PGP) group to develop a solution for storing renewable energy using batteries, the venture capital fund manager announced via MTI.
The company’s grid solution could play a major role in smoothing out system-level imbalances in Hungary’s entire electricity network. As renewable energy sources gain ground, the uneven availability of these sources is becoming an increasing challenge. Currently, gas engines are used to manage these fluctuations, activated whenever renewable energy is unavailable.
A new era in renewable energy storage?
The group has been developing its pioneering solution for four years, which will be the first in Hungary to allow this balancing to be carried out with batteries instead of gas engines. László Zentkó, founder and CEO of PGP, explained that when they started developing the project, they did not yet realize how urgent the issue of energy storage would become with the rapid expansion of green energy. According to him, their solution is already more cost-effective and faster in response time compared to the gas engines most commonly used for balancing.
Bence Katona, CEO of Hiventures, emphasized that their equity investment once again supports a pioneering, innovative technology that could not have been financed through bank loans. The majority of the funding will be used to purchase and install four Tesla Megapacks, currently the most advanced energy storage technology available. These will be complemented by a Slovenian control unit and monitoring system. Together, the two components form a virtual power plant that links multiple energy network participants into one unit and optimizes their operations, the statement explained.
Hiventures is one of the largest and most active venture capital fund managers in Central and Eastern Europe. The company provides financing from both EU and its own resources for the entire Hungarian entrepreneurial ecosystem—from the idea stage to large corporate investments.
