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The magic of flexibility
David Peterson
We’re thrilled to finally announce our investment in Beebop, a Belgium-based AI-powered forecasting and orchestration platform that enables utilities, energy suppliers and OEMs to harness the value of “behind-the-meter” residential flexibility. This is an interesting one, so I wanted to share a bit more about our thesis, and the story behind the investment.
The idea of providing flexibility back to the grid by turning off demand, or tapping pools of capacity, is not new. Since the 2000s, utilities have been signing deals with industrial facilities, paying them in advance if they agreed to turn off at times of peak energy usage. In the early 2010s, countless “demand response” startups popped up, claiming they could help the grid balance by asking consumers to turn off their ACs for the greater good. (As you might imagine, that doesn’t work too well on hot days. Most of these residential “virtual power plants” were unreliable pools of capacity, which made them difficult to monetize.)
But a few things have changed since then.
First, renewable energy is responsible for an increasing share of our energy supply. Because renewable energy is inherently variable (the sun isn’t always shining, the wind isn’t always blowing), flexibility is becoming an even more critical tool to balance the grid.
Second, “behind-the-meter” consumer devices, such as EVs/chargers, home battery systems, and heat pumps, are coming online at unprecedented scale. And in aggregate, the demand drawn by these devices is as significant as the demand drawn by industrial and commercial facilities.
Third, these devices are now connected to the internet. Ten years ago, the sort of control required by Beebop was only attainable by installing sensors and controllers locally. Not so anymore. Now Beebop can do everything they need to do (from a control and orchestration perspective) with an API call.
Fourth, advances in artificial intelligence finally make the modeling of millions of devices technically possible. I won’t share too much about Beebop’s technology here, but suffice it to say that they’ve made some breakthroughs which enable the orchestration of “behind-the-meter” devices at a scale, and with a level of fine-tuned control, that is – to quote a prospective customer in the United States – “literally magic.”
Fifth, energy demand, due to increasing electrification and surging AI data center usage, is, for the first time in years, on the rise!
For all these reasons, we think that the time is right for exactly this sort of technology. But, ultimately, this one is all about the team. Jan-Willem, Bert, and Sandra have been working in this space for the past decade and a half. Jan-Willem and Sandra both started, and sold, virtual power plant businesses. Bert is an energy system expert with deep experience across industry and academia. Having learned lots of lessons from their past experiences, they have a unique view on the space, and how to wedge into the market to capture significant value. Not only that, they’ve bootstrapped this business for the past year, and as a result, they already have a product, a top-notch team of PhDs and energy experts, and customers.
As an aside, this is an interesting example of a company that is being built to be globally scalable and significant from day one, but also could only have been started in Europe. Belgium, the Netherlands, and a few other European countries, have generated a disproportionate share of their energy from renewables for years. This forced them to figure out flexibility long ago. As a result, they are essentially living with grids of the future, today. (There’s a reason PG&E sent their best and brightest over to Belgium a decade ago to learn some best practices.) The US is just now starting to catch up (e.g. see FERC Order 2222 and Jigar Shah’s leadership on DERs) and Beebop is ready to show them the way.
I couldn’t be more excited to work with Jan-Willem, Sandra, Bert and team. And I’m forever thankful that Jan-Willem finally responded to my seventh (or maybe it was my eighth?) professionally persistent email. This will be an exciting one to watch.
David
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PORTFOLIO NEWS
Beebop raised $5.5M to integrate residential devices into the power systems. The round was led by Angular Ventures, with support from Contrarian Ventures.
CruxOCM was selected by Delek Logistics Partners to co-commercialize CruxOCM's product, gatherBOT™, for gathering system control center operations automation.
PORTFOLIO JOBS
Firebolt
Support Engineer (New York)
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