Plurion, the fledgling Scottish energy company, is to be offered a £4.8m Regional Selective Assistance award to commercialise its revolutionary battery technology, The Herald has learned.

Plurion, the fledgling Scottish energy company, is to be offered a £4.8m Regional Selective Assistance award to commercialise its revolutionary technology that will be able to power an entire village on batteries, The Herald has learned.

The Scottish Executive, which provides RSA grants, yesterday declined to comment on the award, but said the details of all the grants provided in the last three months would be made public on Wednesday in a quarterly report.

Plurion's technology, based on zinc and cerium batteries, has the potential to store large quantities of electricity - potentially as much as 10 megawatts or more - on an industrial scale at an affordable cost.

The company, which is an offshoot of California-based Electrochemical Design Associates, has also been a recipient of funds from the Intermediary Technology Institute programme.

Plurion chairman Mike Woodruffe said: "Plurion is an excellent example of Scotland's success in attracting high-technology development into Scotland. I am convinced Plurion will transform the economics of using renewable intermittent energy resources by making available a battery big enough to make storage commercially attractive."

He added the company does not plan to draw down on its RSA grant until late 2008, but at that time he intends to construct a factory in Fife and within five years have 100-plus staff.

"We are currently moving from the benchtop to building a commercial prototype. Within five years, I have no doubt we'll be selling hundreds of our batteries," he said. "The demand is most certainly there, and it will grow as the price of oil and thus energy generation becomes more expensive."

He said his customers would include utilities, electricity providers and wind-farm operators, all of whom will be able to store the electricity generated directly into Plurion's batteries.

Woodruffe added that the company next year intends to seek money from private equity sources and through a possible listing on the Alternative Investment Market.