British heat battery start-up Caldera has secured a £470,000 grant from the Department of Business Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS) to help it rollout its Warmstone battery to 12 pilot homes.
The Warmstone heat battery has been developed to store off-peak renewable electricity as heat, which can then be used for providing zero-carbon heating and hot water in homes.
Caldera will use the funding from BEIS’ Energy Entrepreneurs Fund to rollout the technology to pilot homes in the south of England, with installations expected to be completed by Christmas. BEIS announced that up to £11 million was up for grabs through the scheme back in February.
“We are delighted to have been chosen by the Energy Entrepreneurs Fund. It was a highly competitive process and is a further vote of confidence in both our approach and the Warmstone technology we have pioneered,” said Caldera CEO James Macnaghten.
“Our zero-carbon heat battery has been purposely designed to operate just like a boiler so there is no need for expensive retrofits. Because of this we are already taking a significant number of pre-orders from homeowners across the country keen to decarbonise their homes and get off oil and gas, yet unable to make the economics of alternative technologies such as heat pumps, work for them.”
Since launching the technology in May 2021, Caldera has begun taking a significant number of pre-orders for 2022 and beyond, the company said. It has employed eight new staff to meet the demand. Additionally, in September the company announced it had teamed up with myenergi to develop a customised control system.
Current± caught up with Macnaghten earlier this year to discuss exactly how the technology works and how it could fit into the decarbonisation of heat.