Smart storage startup Chakratec saises $4.4 million to bring its innovative 5-10 minute charging technology for electric vehicles to market

With growing popularity of electric cars, there is a growing need for accessible fast-charging stations to support millions of electric cars on our roads. Chakratec is a manufacturer of a patented kinetic storage that matches the needs of EV Charging Stations (EVCS) to provide high quality and reliable service. Its Kinetic Storage enables wide deployment of EVCS in rural areas and regions with weak grid and decreases the operational cost of EVCS by up to 70%. Chakratec’s battery provides unlimited charging and discharging cycles per day and is sustainable for a period of no less than 20 years of operation, easily deployable and eco-friendly.

The Israeli-based smart storage startup announced Monday that it has completed its third financing round in which it raised $4.4 million to bring its innovative 5-10 minute charging technology for electric vehicles to market and enables the company to conduct its first three pilot projects in Europe with three of Europe’s leading utilities. The round is led by the Israeli iArgento Group and the Singaporean company Goldbell. Chakratec’s first investor was Capital Nature, which remains the company’s largest shareholder. Chakratec has already raised 3.2 million dollars in its previous rounds.  The success of these pilots will lead to first orders later this year.

Founded in 2013 by three high-tech entrepreneurs — Ilan Ben David, Nir Zohar and Dudi Pincu — who pivoted their careers to clean tech, their vision is to enable high penetration of renewable energy by providing an economic and green electricity storage solution. Their Solution is a kinetic battery for commercial and industrial applications. The advantages of flywheels at the cost of chemical storage. Chakratec is developing an energy storage system with unlimited charge / discharge cycles, totally green and easily deployable. At the heart of the system is an array of innovative kinetic batteries. This array is managed by their smart management system allowing the customer to maximize his benefits by dynamically allocating storage resources for the main energy storage uses like Energy Time Shift, UPS, Regulation and others.

The company has developed a unique, innovative energy storage technology powered by kinetic batteries using a flywheel concept. These batteries provide a high-power energy supply, allowing a large number (tens to hundreds of thousands) of charge and discharge cycles over a lifetime of 20 years. Energy storage is bridging the gap between energy production and consumption and is the key enabler for efficient utility scale renewable energy.

Chakratec is taking a fresh view on market needs, incorporating patent pending innovations in flywheel structure, materials and system architecture into an energy storage system design that optimizes storage resources allocation. This storage system has unprecedented economic benefits specifically in small to medium size applications from 3 kWh to 3 MWh and larger systems. The EnerQube 3000, with a patented technology, that has its technical advantages alongside financial savings and is additionally clean and green.

“Chakratec has developed an innovative EV charging technology that obviates the need for upgrading the power grid, enabling rapid deployment of fast EV charging systems. The company is currently conducting pilot projects with three global energy providers that see our technology as the solution for reduced EV charging times, and a facilitator for global market penetration by electric vehicles,” Chakratec CEO Ilan Ben-David said.

Until today, fast charging of electric vehicles required a high-power electricity connection, which often necessitates a costly, complicated and lengthy process of upgrading the distribution network infrastructure. The use of kinetic batteries makes it easy to deploy fast EV charging stations anywhere, integrating all kinds of energy sources, at extremely low operating costs. The charging process developed by Chakratec can be compared to the flushing of water in a toilet tank – when a strong flow is needed, a lever is pressed and the tank empties rapidly and then fills up again. Similarly, when a vehicle enters a charging station, the kinetic battery empties, rapidly transferring the energy to the vehicle, and then fills up again. Chemical batteries cannot be used for this application due to the number of cycles and high power required.

Chakratec has recently won the 2018 Outstanding Venture Award of the NREL Industry Growth Forum competition – the world’s most prestigious competition in the field of renewable energy (NREL, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado, is a world leader in the field). The company has also won the 2017 eMove360o Award for Electric Mobility & Autonomous Driving, Energy Storage category.