RayGen raises $127m as local solar thermal hopeful prepares for global stage

US offshore oil drilling giant SLB has once again led a major fundraising round for Australian solar and thermal energy storage hopeful, RayGen, this time delivering a total of $A127 million from a range of existing and new backers.

RayGen Resources on Thursday announced the closure of the capital raise, led by a $31 million follow-on investment from Texas-based SLB as well as the execution of a previously agreed joint Strategic Deployment Agreement (SDA) to accelerate commercialisation.

SLB led a capital raise in April of last year, when a total of $A51 million was invested, including $20 million from Breakthrough Victoria, the state-owned venture capital fund led by former premier John Brumby.

Breakthough Victoria has also chipped in to this latest round, alongside AGL Energy, Equinor Ventures and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (Arena), which added in a further $17 million to the $10 million funding agreement announced last year.

Photon Energy, too, is in the mix, sending a message with the fresh round of investment that it remains “determined to support the global deployment of [RayGen’s] technology” – including through a new project proposed for South Africa.

Photon has been helping RayGen to advance plans to use its integrated solar electricity and heat technology for a commercial scale project in South Australia – as revealed in 2023 by RenewEconomy.

Raygen says a development application has been submitted for the 150MW project at Yadnarie, on South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula, while Photon has also announced the development of a 250MW Raygen project in South Africa.

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RayGen’s technology uses mirrors to concentrate sunlight onto Australian-made, highly efficient solar modules that producing electricity and heat, the latter of which is captured and stored in water reservoirs for on-demand electricity dispatch via a synchronous engine.

One third of the sunlight that hits the modules is converted into electricity, and two-thirds into heat (hot water at 95°C). The storage solution uses two water pits – each to a depth of fifteen to twenty metres and the size of a farm dam – to store energy thermally as hot and cold water.

The company’s flagship project in Carwarp, Victoria, is billed as the “world’s largest operating next-generation thermal hydro long-duration energy storage project,” capable of delivering 17 hours of continuous power to the electricity grid – and is under an offtake agreement with AGL.

Last year, RayGen opened one of Australia’s largest onshore renewable energy manufacturing facilities, a 170MW per annum solar module production line in Melbourne.

RayGen CEO Richard Payne said on Thursday that the fresh round of funding – including from new investors like Quanta Services and Oxy Technology Ventures – comes as the company’s technology is being considered for multi-gigawatt-hour projects, globally.

“This is already an Australian success story; our mission now is to deploy this technology to the world,” Payne says.

“Beyond their funding commitments, the calibre of our strategic investors places RayGen in an unrivalled position as we continue to drive local and international technology deployments.

“It also enables us to continue to play an important role in Australia’s energy transition and pioneer innovation to help us achieve our climate goals through our project development activities in Australia, South Africa and beyond.”

In it’s own statement, SLB said it believed RayGen’s solar thermal hydro technology had the potential to help solve the “intermittency challenge” of renewable energy.

“We look forward to deploying their solutions on a global scale,” said SLB vice president of renewables and energy efficiency, Irlan Ami, on Thursday.

Arena CEO Darren Miller says RayGen is a “true testament to Australian ingenuity.”

“Its work in solar-and-storage will have a substantial impact on the global energy landscape and Arena is proud to have been there almost every step of the way,” Miller said on Thursday.

AGL chief operating officer Markus Brokhof says electricity generated and stored at Carwarp is already being supplied to AGL customers in Victoria.

“AGL has long been an early supporter and adopter of innovative energy solutions like RayGen’s, and we believe this technology has the potential to be deployed at greater scale and could be one solution to the challenge of long duration energy storage,” Brokhof said this week.