Splight, an AI startup at the forefront of grid operations technologies, announced the completion of its seed funding round. The $12M round was led by noa (formerly A/O) and joined by EDP Ventures, Elewit, Draper Cygnus, Draper B1, Ascent Energy Ventures, Fen Ventures, Reaction Global, Barn Investments, and the UC Berkeley Foundation, among others.
This capital infusion will support the company’s mission to address the global, multi-generational challenge of clean energy at scale, expanding its North America and EU presence and continuing to grow its development, implementation, and leadership teams to keep up with growing demand.
Grid congestion, also known as grid bottlenecks, is a shortage of transmission capacity caused by the grid’s reliance on outdated contingency management methods that leave up to half of grid transmission capacity unutilized. These bottlenecks lead to up to 40% of renewable energy generation being wasted and thousands of gigawatts of renewable energy projects waiting in queues to be connected to the grid.
As electrification increases across all industries, renewable energy supply and efficient grid operations are essential to meet growing demand. Renewable energy power plants, Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) and batteries are booming, but until now the industry lacked the technology to manage them at scale.
Splight has developed new AI-based technology for advanced grid operations that tackles congestion using inverter-based resources (IBRs) as a source of reliability. It significantly reduces curtailment and accelerates the connection of utility-scale renewable power plants and the deployment of DERs and batteries. Its technology takes a novel approach, using real-time data and algorithms to use IBRs as grid-friendly assets.
By using Splight technology to tackle contingencies in real-time, up to 2x extra transmission capacity is unlocked, enabling terawatts of clean energy to be injected into the grid while simultaneously adding reliability. The no-tradeoff solution is transformative for grid operations: Splight’s tech is the key to prevent clean energy being wasted and facilitate the deployment and connection of renewable energy, DERs, and batteries at the pace needed and with the existing transmission infrastructure.
“Our technology is proven and commercially viable: we are solving grid congestion while adding reliability. It can be deployed fast enough to inject more than 3,000 GWs of clean energy within months. This round is a huge vote of confidence and will be used to expand our business globally,” said Fernando Llaver, CEO of Splight.
SOURCE: PRNewswire