Ev.energy has raised US$8.8 million (£6.3 million) to “aggressively” scale the company’s reach across energy utility partners, car manufacturers, charger partners and drivers.
Specifically, it is looking at scaling its operations in the USA, Europe, Asia and Australasia following the Series A funding round, which was led by Energy Impact Partners (EIP).
The funding round was then supported by Future Energy Ventures, the venture capital investment and collaboration platform of E.ON, and UK-based sustainability-focused fund Cyan Finance as well as a range of angel investors including Dunelm Energy.
“We are very proud to have won EIP as an investor: as they are the central player in the energy transition they have already helped us to find new business opportunities in their global coalition of forward-thinking energy firms,” said Nick Woolley, CEO and co-founder of ev.energy.
Ev.energy’s platform aggregates electric vehicles (EVs) into a virtual power plant (VPP) that can be used by energy utilities to optimise wholesale costs, reduce grid congestion and integrate more renewable energy.
Key to the platform is ev.energy’s smart charging algorithm, which aligns charging with intermittent low carbon electricity to reduce carbon emission from grid electricity typically by 10-20%. Additionally, drivers with home solar are able to achieve zero carbon emissions by using ev.energy’s solar matching algorithm.
“The transition to electric vehicle is a once in a hundred-year transformation of the energy sector,” Woolley added.
In June 2020, the company claimed a new milestone after it won a tender to provide flexibility services to UK Power Networks (UKPN), with this being the first time domestic EVs had won a commercial tender.
Following on from this, it signed a partnership with Hubject that enables users of ev.energy’s home smart charging app and platform to access Hubject’s interchange platform, which has over 270,000 chargers registered on it.
Then in April it was announced it had worked with E.ON on the supplier’s latest EV tariff – dubbed Next Drive – which allows EV drivers to charge their cars at a fixed price of 4p/kWh between midnight and 4am.