Photoncycle, an Oslo-based vitality storage scaleup, has raised €15 million in Sequence A funding to allow households to retailer surplus summer season solar energy for winter heating and electrical energy.
The spherical was led by NordicNinja and Voima Ventures, with participation from current traders Lifeline Ventures, Eviny Ventures, Luminar Ventures, and Momentum.
“Europe is starting to unravel short-duration storage. The remaining hole is seasonal. If households can retailer summer season vitality for winter use, they scale back publicity to imported gasoline and worth volatility in addition to to growing grid prices for shoppers,” mentioned Bjørn Brandtzæg, founder and CEO of Photoncycle.
Based in 2020 by Brandtzæg, Photoncycle claims to be constructing the distributed storage infrastructure for Europe’s renewable vitality future. The corporate develops solid-state hydrogen vitality storage techniques that allow households and companies to retailer summer season solar energy for winter use. The corporate’s patented expertise converts surplus renewable vitality into solid-state hydrogen, saved underground, and releases it as clear warmth and energy when wanted.
In keeping with Photoncycle, the funding comes as Europe continues to grapple with the structural vulnerabilities uncovered by the 2022 vitality disaster. The corporate states that the EU imported €396 billion of fossil fuels in 2025, round €880 per citizen, underscoring the bloc’s continued dependence on exterior provide at the same time as renewable era expands.
It highlighted that winter publicity is very extreme: area heating makes up 62.5% of family vitality use, and pure gasoline stays a serious a part of residential consumption, making households weak to seasonal fluctuations in world gasoline costs.
With this recent capital, the corporate goals to assist the business rollout in Denmark and the Netherlands and finance the primary section of an industrialisation plan that features a proposed 1.4-terawatt-hour annual manufacturing facility.
Photoncycle claims that at full industrial scale, its proposed 1.4 TWh manufacturing facility would have storage capability equal to roughly 140,000 houses, every storing 10,000 kWh of seasonal vitality.
The scaleup’s distributed, household-level seasonal storage goals to decrease the quantity of imported gasoline wanted for winter heating, thereby lowering Europe’s dependence on fossil gasoline imports throughout winter.
To decrease upfront prices for householders, the corporate intends to supply the system beneath a subscription-based mannequin masking photo voltaic panels, storage, servicing, and entry to vitality buying and selling markets
Photoncycle experiences robust early curiosity from households in search of alternate options to gasoline heating. In Denmark, the place Photoncycle’s ready listing is rising shortly, vitality prices are amongst Europe’s highest, and 300,000 houses nonetheless depend on gasoline heating, which will likely be phased out by 2035.
“Because the share of renewable vitality will increase, structural worth volatility in electrical energy markets is rising. Seasonal storage is due to this fact not a distinct segment answer, however a systemic necessity. Photoncycle addresses this imbalance by enabling households to retailer vitality throughout seasons and scale back their dependence on imported fossil fuels. This is a crucial constructing block for a resilient and sovereign European vitality system,” mentioned Inka Mero, founder and Managing Accomplice at Voima Ventures.
Photoncycle goals to make use of this Sequence A funding to scale manufacturing and early business deployment in Denmark initially, adopted by Europe’s different massive markets, together with the Netherlands. Past Europe, there are alternatives to scale its expertise in Asia, together with Japan, and within the US.
