Nzero developed a new algorithm that helps building owners estimate their carbon pollution down to the hour.
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Amperesand raises $12.5M seed round to remake the humble 140-year-old transformer
Transformers are everywhere on the electrical grid, and they'll need new tech to realize the "internet of power."
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Electric utilities are driving customers into the hands of startups
Imagine running a large public company — S&P 500 large — and telling some of your most promising customers that you can’t sell them what they want unless they’re willing to wait three to five years at a minimum. In some cases, the wait might be as long as a decade.
More likely than not, those customers would find someone else to give their money to.
That’s what’s happening today at large electric utilities across the U.S., according to a new report in The Wall Street Journal. Of all the companies that should be eager to embrace the electric transition, electric utilities would seem to be at the top of the list. Yet they also appear to be some of the most hesitant.
The problem is particularly pressing in California, where the next couple decades will see the state phase out fossil fuel vehicles. Most of the replacements will be electric, which means that utilities should see an easily anticipated surge in demand, something most businesses would welcome.
For now, utilities are probably happy to sell a few extra kilowatt-hours. There aren’t enough EV owners yet to require large amounts of new investment. And where available, most EV owners time their charging sessions to take advantage of low prices that some utilities offer. Plus, a slew of startups like WeaveGrid have cropped up to help utilities smooth some of the spikes that can occur when too many EVs get plugged in around the same time.
But as more vehicles get plugged in and zero-emissions deadlines grow nearer, it’s clear that many utilities aren’t prepared for what’s to come.
Three climate technologies every investor should have in their portfolio
Few fields are changing as quickly as climate tech. In the last five years, it’s undergone a radical transformation, blossoming from a niche area to a broad sector full of promising niches. With that diversification comes risk and opportunity.
And choices. So, so many choices. With the world looking to revamp nearly every corner of the global economy, there is a seemingly unending supply of startups in which to invest. There’s no way to create a definitive list, but here are three areas that deserve a closer look.
Enhanced rock weathering
With humans on track to blow through the “safe” amount of global warming in less than five years, carbon removal has been getting a lot of attention. There are lots of ways to do it, too: from big carbon filters and enhanced algae to rocks. Yes, rocks.
Several types of rocks naturally draw carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and transform it into a stable mineral. Problem is, that process is happening too slowly to have any effect on the colossal amounts of carbon we’ve pumped into the atmosphere.
One of the easiest ways to speed that process up is to expose more rock to the atmosphere by crushing it to bits and spreading it out over a wide area. That may not sound very appealing, but it is to farmers.
Farmers already spend lots of money on soil amendments, which includes everything from synthetic fertilizers to compost and manure. In certain regions with acidic soils, farmers also apply crushed limestone to raise the pH in the area.
Three climate technologies every investor should have in their portfolio by Tim De Chant originally published on TechCrunch
Without a single euro changing hands, Irish nonprofit is helping to reinvent the grid
Every day, strong gusts off the North Atlantic buffet hundreds of wind farms in Ireland, generating so much energy that owners often have no one to sell it to, forcing them to dump otherwise useful power.
“12 to 14% of our potential generation goes into surplus. In Northern Ireland, it’s at 18%,” said Derek Roddy, co-founder and CEO of smart home company Climote. “If you’re a wind farmer, you are feeling the pain. This is a huge chunk of change that you’re walking away from, but the system struggles with what to do with it.”
Roddy had been mulling this problem over for a while. Climote focuses on heating and hot water, so he thinks a lot about supply and demand signals in the electricity sector. It was on his mind when he attended an event where an Irish social enterprise called FoodCloud took home one of the top awards. FoodCloud, which was founded in 2012 by two university students, intercepts food that would otherwise go to waste and donates it to those in need.
“I’m just listening in the audience to their whole story about sustainability, and I went, shit, surplus energy, surplus food — they’re the same,” Roddy told TechCrunch+.
At that moment, he realized that he had been approaching the surplus energy problem the wrong way. With his company, he had been focused on the technology part of the puzzle. And while that’s still a key piece, it hadn’t made the dent he wanted. After all, Ireland was still wasting a significant amount of wind power.
“I went, OK, maybe we’re looking at this wrong, Maybe we need to go and do our bit for the world and the globe in solving the surplus piece and by default we prove how the actual system could work.” The answer wouldn’t be another startup, but a nonprofit social enterprise styled after FoodCloud.
Finding partners
Having spent the last two decades in the smart home business, Roddy had a front-row seat to the Celtic Tiger economy. The tech sector had helped pull the previously agricultural nation out of poverty and turned it into one of the wealthiest nations in Europe. But even in wealthy countries, some people tend to be left behind.
Without a single euro changing hands, Irish nonprofit is helping to reinvent the grid by Tim De Chant originally published on TechCrunch
Casper co-founders want to sell you another box. This time, it’s a battery.
A few years ago, mattress company Casper’s co-founders Philip Krim and Jeff Chapin were banging their heads against the wall. Krim was in Long Island in New York while Chapin was in Wyoming. The weather in New York can be pretty different from that in Wyoming, but when bad storms roll through, they both suffer power outages.
“I spent most of COVID out on Long Island, where the power lines are old,” Krim told TechCrunch+. “They would go down through bad storms. I had solar, and my wife’s like, ‘We have solar, why do we lose power?’ I’m like, ‘Well, we don’t have a battery.’ I tried to add a battery. I struck out with three different electricians. I called the people who installed our solar; they said we would not roll trucks just for a battery,” he said.
“And then I called Jeff because he’s smart and honest. I’m like, ‘How do I do this?’ He was like, ‘It’s really frickin’ hard.’”
Chapin’s experience hadn’t been much better. After moving to Wyoming, he grew concerned that his home would be without heat if, during a blizzard, the nearby cottonwood trees started shedding limbs onto the power lines. “That’s how they survive in a windy climate: They drop branches,” he said.
His neighbor was a solar installer, so the process should have been easier than it had been for Krim. But his neighbor’s company would only install batteries alongside solar panels, and Chapin’s roof was too complex and shaded to work for solar.
After the two spoke, they knew they were onto something.
“Given my background,” said Chapin, a former IDEO designer, “when you run into a consumer experience that is near impossible to navigate through, it generally means there’s a new process or system that can be designed. And there’s probably a business opportunity there.”
Casper co-founders want to sell you another box. This time, it’s a battery. by Tim De Chant originally published on TechCrunch
LineVision and GE team up to fortify the electrical grid to handle more renewables
One of the biggest hurdles to decarbonizing the grid is getting electricity from point A to point B.
But that’s often easier said than done. Today, nearly a terawatt of zero-carbon generating capacity is waiting to be hooked up to the grid. That’s enough to decarbonize 80% of U.S. electricity by the end of the decade, according to the Lawrence Berkeley Lab.
To get there, though, the grid needs some upgrades, which also couldn’t come at a better time. The U.S. electrical grid is aging — 70% of transmission lines are over 25 years old — and outmoded — it was originally designed with massive fossil fuel power plants in mind, not distributed renewable sources.
But new transmission lines — the large, high-tension wires that form the backbone of the grid — are expensive. Depending on the voltage and where they’re being built, they start over $1 million per mile and go up from there.
That’s why for the last five years, LineVision has been working on a way to unlock additional capacity on existing transmission lines. The startup recently closed a $33 million Series C led by Climate Innovation Capital and S2G Ventures. With the new funding, the company has been growing its team and moved into new offices down the street from Greentown Labs in Somerville, Massachusetts, where it incubated. It’s also been expanding partnerships with major utilities.
Now, LineVision tells TechCrunch that it’s teaming up with GE’s Grid Solutions division, integrating its dynamic line rating technology with complementary offerings from GE to give utilities a more comprehensive way to monitor their transmission lines and boost the amount of electricity they can safely carry.
The partnership was driven in part by utilities, which are necessarily cautious about integrating new technologies — after all, crashing the grid comes with pretty significant consequences.
LineVision and GE team up to fortify the electrical grid to handle more renewables by Tim De Chant originally published on TechCrunch
Odyssey Energy Solutions continues quest to electrify developing economies with $5.4M seed
There’s been a lot of talk about remaking the electric grid in the U.S. and in Europe, preparing it for a tidal wave of intermittent renewable power and instant-on batteries. It’s happening in fits and starts, with utilities themselves alternately embracing and pushing back against the new, more distributed future. That’s been complicating grid upgrades.
But in places where the grid is unreliable or nonexistent, where incumbent resistance doesn’t exist, potential disruptors are popping up. For years, setting up electric grids on islands or in remote territories was a costly proposition since their relatively small sizes ran counter to fossil fuels’ economies of scale. Now, though, renewables are flipping the script.
Yet even renewables benefit from economies of scale. Scale can be relatively easy to find in places like the U.S., where projects might be large and financing easy to obtain, but in developing countries, it’s all harder to come by. Odyssey Energy Solutions is hoping to change that.
In an exclusive with TechCrunch+, the startup announced today that it has raised $5.43 million in a seed round led by Equal Ventures with Twelve Below, Abstract Ventures, Founder Collective, and MCJ Collective participating. The new funds will go toward expanding its platform that enables the planning, financing, building, and operating of renewable energy projects in developing economies.
Odyssey Energy Solutions continues quest to electrify developing economies with $5.4M seed by Tim De Chant originally published on TechCrunch
Massive iron batteries could be key to displacing natural gas from the grid
With the impending passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, renewables are about to get a fresh jolt in the U.S. They’re already some of the cheapest sources of electricity to build and run, but they haven’t taken over because they’re often dependent on the weather.
The simple solution is to store any excess power produced, but that raises the overall cost of renewable power. That’s set off a race among startups to find the cheapest way to do it, from batteries to compressed air and even giant concrete blocks.
The front runner so far appears to be batteries, many of which use the same lithium-ion chemistries found in EV batteries. The scale of EV battery production has made lithium-ion easy to obtain, allowing it to get a foothold in the sector, but its long-term prospects for grid-scale storage are murkier given its high cost of materials.
Competition for battery materials is intensifying, and there are many uses for batteries beyond EVs, which is why some companies, like Germany’s VoltStorage, are trying to build batteries using the cheapest, most widely available materials possible — chiefly, iron.
Beacon Power Services raises $2.7M to improve electricity access for sub-Saharan African cities
Sub-Saharan Africa’s share of the global population without access to electricity stood at 77% in 2020, according to reports. Also, the average daily electricity supply in some of Africa’s largest cities is less than 12 hours. As a result, individuals and businesses find other options and substitutes, such as generators, to deal with their power issues; however, these solutions can either be costly to use or affect the climate.
While solar grids and panels are another viable option and have compelling use cases for end consumers, there’s still an opportunity to launch products targeted at power distribution companies, and that’s where Beacon Power Services (BPS) plays. The energy tech company, which provides data and grid management solutions to help Africa’s power sector distribute electricity more efficiently, is announcing today that it has closed a seed round of $2.7 million.
Founder and chief executive officer Bimbola Adisa, an aerospace engineer, started the company in 2014 after working several years for a power turbine manufacturer and as an investment banker covering the power sector in the U.S. For the latter, most of his clients included electric utilities, service providers and manufacturers. In an interview with TechCrunch, he said these experiences gave him exposure to the application of technology in the power sector, and he saw an opportunity to apply that in Nigeria and across Africa.
Adisa launched BPS in 2014 to address the inadequate electricity supply from power distribution companies. The U.S.- and Nigeria-based utility company provides energy management software and analytics for utilities. Its AI-enabled grid management platform, Adora, solves one of two fundamental problems power distribution companies face in Africa.
The software offers real-time visibility on network performance for electric utilities and connects to every utility asset and customer node on the grid, allowing energy providers to preempt outages and identify network losses, respond to them quickly and distribute electricity more efficiently. “The result is that utilities can operate more efficiently, recover more revenue, and by reducing outages, customers get increased supply of electricity (more hours supplied daily), so everyone wins,” said BFS in an emailed response to TechCrunch on how Adora works.
The other problem is data-focused, tackled by the company’s proprietary platform called Customer and Asset Information Management system (CAIMs). Utilities in Africa struggle to maintain an accurate database of their customers, assets and grid topology (the relationship between assets and customers). The CAIMs solves this by factoring in the unique conditions within which Africa’s utilities operate, for example, poor address systems, and helps them digitize their data, which serves as a foundation for network improvements.
“Africa is home to the fastest growing cities in the world, but when most people think of energy access in Africa, they think of the rural areas with little or no access to electricity at all. However, it is impossible for Africa to develop without significantly improving electricity access and reliability across its major cities,” said CEO Adisa in a statement. “When we realized that solutions designed for mature markets fail to address the unique infrastructure challenges Africa faces, we developed a tailored solution for power companies on the continent to improve daily grid supply of electricity.”
Bim Adisa (CEO)
Adisa told TechCrunch that BPS has grown from a single utility in Nigeria to four utilities in two countries, including Ghana, covering more than 8 million customers (residential and businesses). BPS’ business model entails working with its clients as partners over the long term, and not just to sell products, said Adisa. As such, the company can defer most of the upfront cost of deploying its technology in exchange for service-based payments commensurate with the value it creates.
The eight-year-old energy utility company says it differs from other platforms because it provides “local solutions that factor in the local operating environment in Africa.” For instance, most off-the-shelf solutions created for mature markets do not factor in the frequency of outages encountered in Africa or the network communications issues experienced, but BPS claims its solutions have solved that.
The company’s seed round was led by Seedstars Africa Ventures with participation from Persistent Energy, Kepple Africa Ventures, Factor[e] and Oridun Capital Management. Speaking on the investment, Maxime Bouan, managing partner at Seedstars Africa Ventures, said, “As a society, we have recognized climate change as one of the biggest threats to our generation, and it is critical we use smart capital to support entrepreneurs across Africa who are creating innovative and localized solutions to tackle this challenge.”
The new funding would enable BPS to improve its current products (product upgrades to add new features and incorporate automation) and expand into new markets beyond Nigeria and Ghana, where it currently operates.