From: Mercom Capital Group

Form Energy – a startup focusing on making battery systems that can store renewable energy (solar and wind) for longer durations, announced the close of a $240 million Series D financing round led by ArcelorMittal’s XCarb innovation fund. TPG’s global impact investing platform TPG Rise participated in the Series D, investing through TPG Rise Climate. The other investors participating in the round include Perry Creek Capital, along with existing investors NGP Energy Technology Partners III, Coatue, Temasek, Energy Impact Partners (EIP), Breakthrough Energy Ventures (BEV), Prelude Ventures, MIT’s The Engine, Capricorn Investment Group, Eni Next, and Macquarie Capital. This brings Form Energy’s total funds raised to over $360 million.

LevelTen Energy – a start-up that helps corporations purchase renewable energy – raised a $35 million Series C funding round led by NGP ETP, with participation from My Climate Journey (MCJ) Collective, as well as nearly all of LevelTen’s existing investors, including Avista Development, Constellation Technology Ventures, Equinor Ventures, Founders’ Co-op, Prelude Ventures, Techstars, TotalEnergies Ventures, and Wireframe Ventures. LevelTen has now raised $62.3 million in aggregate. This capital infusion will help the company further scale its existing renewable energy transaction platform, which comprises the Energy Marketplace, Asset Marketplace, and Performance Monitoring software. The company will also use proceeds to develop additional software solutions to accelerate the clean energy transition.

Malta, a developer of grid-scale long-duration thermal energy storage solutions, announced that Chevron Technology Ventures and Piva Capital had joined Proman, Alfa Laval, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, and Dustin Moskovitz in its oversubscribed Series B financing, increasing the round to over $60 million. The new capital will be used to advance the company’s commercialization strategy.

Solar digital solutions startup Terabase Energy announced that it had signed a definitive agreement to acquire PlantPredict, a predictive solar energy modeling tool, from First Solar. The terms of the agreement were not disclosed. PlantPredict is a predictive solar energy modeling tool that was developed by First Solar for utility-scale PV applications. The First Solar PlantPredict team will join Terabase following the closing of the transaction, which is expected to take place in October 2021.

Q Cells North America, a manufacturer of PV modules and a provider of complete energy solutions, closed an investment into a portfolio of solar-plus-storage projects developed by Amped Solutions. The investment was made using a new grid equity financing structure, under which Q Cells provided Amped Solutions which capital in exchange for the rights to future grid service revenue expected to be generated by the portfolio of operating systems deployed in California. Amped Solutions will keep ownership of the solar power and energy storage facilities and will continue to receive revenues coming from bill savings, tax benefits, and incentives.

UK power infrastructure investor Gridworks and South African investment firm New GX Capital announced that they had injected $40 million into a South Africa-based solar power company operating in the commercial and industrial (C&I) segment to support its expansion across other regions of the African continent. Gridworks invested a total of $31 million in Sustainable Power Solutions Investments (SPS) – $22 million as part of its co-investment with New GX and an additional $9 million to become a majority shareholder in the C&I business.

A consortium of companies led by China Three Gorges South Asia Investment (CSAIL) has bought Alcazar Energy, a renewable energy project developer that operates across the Middle East and North Africa and is backed by Mubadala Investment Company. The acquisition of Alcazar Energy’s portfolio of seven wind and solar projects across Jordan and Egypt with a total generation capacity of 411 MW will give CSAIL, and the other Chinese investors access to the Mena region and help expand their presence. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Echion Technologies, a developer of next-generation materials for Lithium-Ion batteries, raised £10 million (~$13.7 million) in a Series-A funding round led by CBMM, a supplier of niobium products, and BGF, an investor of equity capital in growth economy companies, with the University of Cambridge, Origin Capital, and other existing shareholders also taking part.

Funds managed by affiliates of Apollo Global Management, together with its consolidated subsidiaries, announced a $150 million equity commitment to FlexGen Power Systems, an integration services and software technology provider for energy storage solutions in the U.S. Apollo’s investment will be made in partnership with FlexGen’s existing investors, Altira Group and the founding investment group led by Jerry Miller and Mark Dreyfus. Vinson & Elkins acted as legal counsel to the Apollo Funds. DLA Piper acted as legal counsel, and Citi acted as financial advisor to FlexGen.

For reports and trackers on funding and M&A transactions in solar, energy storage, smart grid, and efficiency sectors, click here.

Read last week’s funding roundup.