Moixa
| Private company | |
| Industry | Design, Technology and Research |
| Founded | 2004 |
| Headquarters | London |
Key people |
Simon Daniel, CEO Chris Wright, CTO |
| Products | Consumer Technology |
| Website | www.moixa.com |
Moixa is a British technology company, founded by Simon Daniel and Chris Wright in 2004, which focuses on energy innovation. It makes the Moixa Smart Home Battery and provides GridShare software to manage distributed fleets of batteries, electric vehicles and other storage devices.
The company has raised about £15 million in investment – around two thirds in equity and the rest in contracts and grants.
ITOCHU Corporation, one of Japan’s largest trading houses, invested £5 million in Moixa in December 2017 and the two companies agreed a strategic partnership to market GridShare in Japan. Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), is also a major investor.
Individual investors include Sam Laidlaw, former CEO of Centrica; Ian Marchant, former CEO of SSE; Brian Count, former Chief Operating Officer of RWE npower; and Lady Barbara Judge, chairman of the Institute of Directors and Athene Capital.
Moixa’s chairman is David Thomlinson, former UK Managing Director of Accenture. The company has offices in London and Manchester.
Moixa Smart Battery
Since the company’s first pilots in 2010, Moixa has installed home batteries in nearly 1,000 UK homes with a combined nine million hours of operation. It expects to launch trials in Japan, Europe and the US in 2018.
The Moixa Smart Battery allows customers to cut energy bills by storing spare power from solar panels instead of exporting it to the network. It also allows users to take advantage of cheap tariffs, importing electricity when it is cheap for use at peak periods. It is a compact (50 cm x 30 cm x 20 cm), wall-mounted unit that fits easily into homes and is simple to install.
GridShare Services
Moixa has pioneered the management of multiple home batteries and electric vehicles, to optimise their performance for owners and aggregate their capacity to support the electricity network.
Moixa’s GridShare platform provides real-time dashboards, data and analytics. It saves customers money by using artificial intelligence to optimise the performance of their battery, based on their patterns of behaviour, market prices and weather conditions. Moixa’s GridShare cashback scheme rewards owners in the UK for allowing their spare battery capacity to be used to support the electricity network.
GridShare can manage large fleets of batteries and electric vehicles to act as a virtual power plant. It can provide a range of services to help balance supply and demand on the electricity network. It can also help local network operators manage constraints, mitigate power spikes from solar generation, electric vehicles and heat pumps and defer capital upgrades. This helps reduce the costs of delivering electricity and enables greater adoption of renewables and electric vehicles.
ITOCHU will install GridShare as standard in its “Smart Star” home battery units in Japan by the summer of 2018. ITOCHU is also a major supplier of battery chemistry to leading energy storage brands and will work with Moixa to promote GridShare to address the growing market for battery management services.
Projects
Moixa is working with Hitachi on the £10.8 million Smart Energy Islands project on the Scilly Isles, which will lay the foundations for the islands to cut electricity bills by 40% and boost renewables by 40%. The company is developing platforms to enable home batteries and electric vehicles to help balance supply and demand within the islands’ energy system. The project will provide a model for home batteries and electric vehicles to play a major role in low-carbon smart energy systems around the world.
Moixa is working with Northern Powergrid and Energise Barnsley on a trial, which links 40 home batteries to demonstrate how virtual power plants can relieve pressures on the electricity network and enable more homes to install solar panels without having to upgrade the local network. The project, near Barnsley, is expected to halve residents’ energy bills and save millions in the costs of running the UK’s power network.
Moixa worked with Oxford City Council on a two-year project to tackle fuel poverty in one of the country’s most deprived communities. It links smart batteries in 82 homes, a school and community centre with 300kWp of solar panels creating a virtual smart local energy grid allowing the community to maximise use of the free energy it generates. The project was named Residential Building Energy Project of the Year in the Energy Awards in 2016.
Moixa has supplied smart batteries to National Energy Action projects designed to tackle fuel poverty in the London boroughs of Camden, Islington and Waltham Forest.
History of Innovation
Moixa has a long history of innovation. Its first patent was a foldable computer keyboard for use with PDA devices.
It developed and launched the world’s first rechargeable USB battery in 2006, which went on to sell more than a million units in over 50 countries. It was shortlisted as a finalist for a UK Design Week Award for best consumer product design of 2006.
Moixa research and development has created a growing reputation and patent portfolio across smart batteries, DC power, microgrids, solar storage and power distribution, including recently granted patents on managing aggregate batteries and virtual power plants.
Awards
- DemoGod – Award 2006
- Design Awards 2007 Finalist
- UK National Energy Efficiency Award 2007 – USBCell
- Innovation in Engineering Awards 2007 – Moixa
- PocketLint – Green Gadget of the Year 2007 – Winner
- PC Pro – Environmental Innovator of the year – Finalist
- Business XL – Company of the year awards – Finalist
- Pocket-Lint Best Green Gadget 2007 – Winner
- European Office Products Award Emerging Vendor of the Year 2008 – Moixa
- Barclays Commercial 'Green Leaders in Business' 2008 – Moixa
- Observer Ethical Awards 2008 – Ethical Products finalist – USBCell
- Computerworld Honours Programme Energy and Environment Finalist 2008 – Moixa
- iF Gold Product Design Award 2008 International Product Design – USBCell
- Rosenblatt New Energy Awards 2008 Entrepreneur of the Year – Simon Daniel
- European Office Product Awards 2008 – USBCell
- Energy Awards 2016 – Residential Building Energy Project of the Year
- BusinessGreen Technology Awards 2016 – highly commended for Solar innovation of the year
- Ashden Awards 2017 – nominated – GridShare
- British Renewable Energy Awards 2017 – Highly commended – Smart Battery
- Clean Energy Awards 2018 – Most Energy Efficient Product of the Year – Smart Battery