UK company Renovagen has used the crowd funding website Crowdcube to raise £263,000 with the support of 160 investors. The fundraising campaign was 76 per cent oversubscribed and coincides with the successful completion of a 6kW prototype version of Renovagen’s patented “Roll-Array” transportable solar power system that enables large rollable solar arrays to be conveniently and quickly deployed from small containers.
Renovagen has created a transportable solar power system that they say has 10 times the power capacity of competing photovoltaic systems and can be deployed in just a few minutes. The company said this technology is of strong interest to military, disaster relief and Mining customers where the cost of energy from diesel generators in remote locations is often excessive due to the extremely high costs of transporting diesel fuel while alternative solar systems are slow and expensive to move or under-powered. Renovagen’s technology has the potential to pack 100kW arrays into 20ft ISO containers, with multiple containerised systems deployable in parallel to create multi-megawatt power plants.
“This is an extremely exciting time for Renovagen, having achieved a huge amount of progress in developing the technology this year, we finally have a 6kW system live-running and meeting all our performance expectations,” said John Hingley, Founder and CEO. “This product has huge potential for reducing carbon emissions and local pollution caused by diesel generators in remote and sensitive environments – whilst saving our customers money and even saving lives in some Disaster Relief and Military situations. We’re extremely pleased to have secured the funding to move to the next stage in our development, including pilot deployments and market launch, and would like to thank the 160 investors who supported us through Crowdcube”.
Early test results of the prototype have demonstrated power output and mechanical performance that meets design targets, according to Renovagen. The company now plans further field testing of the prototype and continued development in order to launch the product during 2015. The company intends to implement a number of pilot projects in late 2014/early 2015 in order to further proof the technology and its efficacy.