Solar company iSun announced it reached an agreement to make a minority interest equity investment in Encore Renewable Energy, a Vermont-based clean energy developer with a history of reclaiming real estate landfills, brownfields, rooftops and carports for community-scale solar PV and large-scale energy storage systems.
The deal provides the two companies opportunities in collaboration across their project pipelines, and accelerates expansion of iSun’s commercial, industrial and utility businesses into new geographic markets, while advancing the company’s involvement with clean energy solutions including solar + storage, brownfield redevelopment and dual land-use/agrivoltaic initiatives. iSun said the investment was made to support organic regional growth through expanding relationships with existing industrial and utility customers.
One innovation that has gained Encore Renewables attention is its work with London-based Highview Power to develop the United States’ first long-duration, liquid-air energy storage system in northern Vermont.
Set to be sized at around 50 MW, with more than eight hours of storage delivering an excess of 400 MWh, the project uses off-peak or excess electricity to chill and liquefy air at -320°F, storing the liquid air in insulated low-pressure tanks. When it’s time for use, the system exposes the liquid air to ambient temperatures to rapidly return it to gas, expanding to 700 times its liquid volume, thereby powering turbines to generate electricity. According to Highview, the system can be configured to also make use of waste heat.
In September, iSun acquired SunCommon in a combination of cash and shares of common stock. The deal is expected to double the company’s projected revenue for 2021.
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.