Seattle-based startup WhyGrene, has introduced the Grene Energy Exchange platform which leverages enterprise cloud & blockchain technology to track and trade energy among utilities and their customers with Distributed Energy Resources (DERs). It coordinates the activity of DERs including wind, solar PV, EVs and battery energy storage systems (BESSs) (and future hydrogen plants) to operate together as Virtual Power Plants (VPPs) that provide useful services to utilities.
Their approach accelerates the sustainable energy transition by helping utilities balance power supply & demand despite the rapid increase of intermittent renewable energy sources, as world leaders drive toward zero carbon by 2050.
WhyGrene’s secure & device agnostic energy platform can improve supply-demand balance by providing an automated marketplace for utilities and DER owners to share DER resources, monitoring and managing the production, storage, consumption, and transfers of renewable energy.
By aggregating these DERs, a VPP built on the Grene platform can offer flexible and dispatchable active power and/or reactive power that can be used to support grid services. In turn, owners of DERs can lower their cost of energy and even make money on their assets, improving their ROI. This win-win for utilities and their customers will make it easier to “Digitize, Decentralize and Decarbonize” the grid.
The structure of the electricity industry has changed dramatically over the past century, in the U.S. and globally. For decades, scale economies associated with large, centralized generation technologies drove vertical integration to spread and contain the cost of electricity, provide universal access, and ensure resilience in each region.
Fifty years ago, skyrocketing fuel prices, environmental concerns, technological innovations, and a desire to open competition caused public and private entities alike to rethink the regional monopoly model.
Following the successful precedents – restructuring of the telecommunications industry and the natural gas industry – policy makers in the 1980s chose to break up monopolies making communications, natural gas and gas-fired power much less expensive for consumers.
The original energy exchanges were borne out of this and with the advent of the Power Purchase Agreement system and innovation in payments and auditing, a new generation of independent power producers (IPPs) were able to raise investment capital, take advantage of incentives including tax-exempt bond financing, and capture Federal tax credits, enabling IPPs to provide renewable power at attractive long-term fixed prices to utilities.
Today, advancements in multiple layers of software, applications and broadband transmission services continue to combine to drive changes in the electric industry and are working so well that innovation continues to be funded by the government, and with the growing popularity of self-generated electricity the old-world order continues to destabilize.
WhyGrene is not the first startup to leverage the advantage of enterprise blockchain in the electric industry. Multiple U.S. energy labs are developing systems that use blockchain to manage transactions.
“We’ve got a really interesting opportunity here,” said Tony Markel, a researcher at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. “We see the electricity grid going through a pretty interesting transition, this whole sector going from having a lot of things be controlled from a central perspective, moving out, to having a lot of distributed energy resources and having a lot of—having millions to billions of devices sitting out there on the power grid.”
“And we’re going to be in a state where we don’t know what all those things are doing,” Markel explained. “They may all have different objectives. And, so, I think where we’re headed with trying to understand blockchain, and building the knowledge base around blockchain, is seeing that future state and knowing that we need a way to develop and ensure trust across that entire very complex, highly distributed environment.”
At its simplest, the job of power grids is to deliver consistent and reliable power to customers. Power generation and consumption must be balanced in real time for these systems to work, and increasing attention is being paid to rising challenges of adding millions of DERs with different manufacturers, operating characteristics, and ownership models; in short, it’s complicated.
To solve this, the Grene platform is brand agnostic, able to monitor and manage different makes of EVs, solar inverters, batteries and other DERs, and track the resulting complex network through its cloud-blockchain technology. That, Phelps has said, gives it an edge over competitors in the space, and is one reason why StartUs Insights ranked WhyGrene in the top five globally of 467 startups analyzed in the grid transaction solutions space, he said during a pitch last year at the Techstars accelerator in Alabama.
WhyGrene shared its blockchain-based exchange solution last year as part of being selected by the Techstars Alabama EnergyTech Accelerator, and were part of the third group of startups to participate in the program. Ten startup companies traveled from across the United States, Sweden and Canada will make up the class, and participated in an intensive, 13-week program beginning this week.
Since the inaugural class in 2020, the Techstars Alabama EnergyTech Accelerator has graduated 19 companies focusing on energy technology, clean tech, climate tech and sustainability. The first two classes have raised a combined $150 million, employ more than 200 people and many companies maintain a presence in Birmingham.
Other companies who participated in the cohort include:
Eneryield: Software that predicts and localizes severe cable faults that can cause outages in power grids, from Sweden.
Solar Unsoiled: Cleaning optimization analytics for the solar industry, from Durham, North Carolina.
Ecolytics: Helping companies turn their impact into an asset through a single platform for sustainability services, from Washington, D.C.
PowerTechs: HRTech/EdTech solution connecting renewable energy technicians with employers and upskilling opportunities, from Providence, Rhode Island.
Idyllo: The first home improvement marketplace curated for individuals and the home. Idyllo makes it simple to find trustworthy products and professionals, from Washington, D.C.
Rivalia Chemical Co.: Extracting rare earth elements from waste materials, from New York.
Hop In Technologies: Mobility software company designing logistics systems for daily commuting, from Toronto, Canada.
Latimer Controls: Developing advanced solar power plant control software, from Boulder, Colorado.
ShipShape Urban Farms: A smart energy partner for profitable, modular, controlled environment agriculture, from Mobile, Alabama.
WhyGrene and Shipshape Urban Farms are planning joint projects to leverage WhyGrene Energy management platform for Shipshape’s Farms that will be powered by renewable energy verified by the blockchain. WhyGrene received a seed investment and mentorship through Techstars’ worldwide network of business leaders.
The Techstars Alabama EnergyTech Accelerator is supported by Alabama Power, the Economic Development Partnership of Alabama (EDPA), the Alabama Department of Commerce, Altec, PowerSouth, the University of Alabama, Southern Research and Hardware Park. The supporters play a key role in the accelerator process, with the common goal of growing Alabama’s startup ecosystem.
Techstars is the most active pre-seed investor in the world, having invested through its accelerators in more than 3,500 companies that have a combined market cap of $98 billion. Founded in 2006, Techstars believes that entrepreneurs create a better future for everyone, and great ideas can come from anywhere.
They are on a mission to invest in an unprecedented number of startups per year enabling more capital to flow to more entrepreneurs around the world and do this by operating accelerator programs and venture capital funds, as well as by connecting startups, investors, corporations, and cities to help build thriving startup communities.
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