The venture capital arm of EDP Renewables, a Portuguese renewable energy company headquartered in Madrid, has announced investment in UK software solutions provider Piclo.
Piclo enables trading between buyers and sellers of electricity capacity, making grids more flexible and contributing to the decarbonisation of electricity networks.
The company’s end-to-end platform is one of the largest in the world, with over 300,000 active assets registered, totalling over 22GW flexible capacity. It has awarded contracts worth £74 million and acquired over 2.6GW of flexible capacity.
Piclo will use the funds to further expand into the US and Australia. It already operates in the UK, Ireland, Italy, Australia, the US and Portugal. In Portugal, it collaborates with E-REDES, EDP’s energy distribution system operator, which uses the Piclo Flex marketplace to trade flexibility.
EDP Ventures’ funding was part of a round co-led by it and two existing investors in the flexibility software provider, the Clean Growth Fund (CGF) and Future Energy Ventures (FEV). A larger funding round is expected later this year.
Flexibility markets allow energy system operators to purchase electricity from flexible sources, such as electric vehicles and batteries, during periods of high demand or low supply. Network regulator Ofgem has called flexibility “essential” to achieving ambitions for a zero carbon electricity system by 2030.
James Johnston, CEO of Piclo, said: “We are pleased to announce EDP Ventures’ new investment into Piclo which will support the growth of our presence in new markets, particularly expanding further into the USA and the Asia-Pacific. Since launching in 2018, we have helped network operators around the world harness flexibility as an essential solution to modernise the grid.”
Frederico Gonçalves, managing director of EDP Ventures, added: “This collaboration will enhance our distributed energy resource assets, such as decentralised storage and industrial and residential assets, globally. With this partnership, we aim to contribute even more to the decarbonization of energy systems worldwide and explore new opportunities in flexibility markets.”
The UK’s flexibility market
Piclo procured its first international project in 2020, joining the Slovenian Green Transformation Consortium to run flexibility trials similar to those it managed in the UK.
The UK government funded Piclo’s trial phase, which saw the participation of 175 flexibility providers with a total combined capacity of 4GW aid the management of local grids in congested areas.
During the beta phase, Piclo partnered with all six of the country’s distribution network operators (DNOs) before penning a “milestone” commercial agreement with UK DNO SSEN, allowing the latter to use Piclo’s flexibility marketplace to procure flex and other ‘smart’ energy services from providers using the online auction process.
As an increasing number of variable generation sources are plugged into the electricity system, flexibility helps to manage the influx and the additional demand from electrification of heating and transport. Piclo’s offering includes how to best use flexibility to unlock the value of those distributed assets.
Given EDP Renewables’ involvement in projects like the recently operational offshore wind development in Moray Firth, it makes sense that the company is seeking involvement in the flexibility market.
SSEN has also been active in the flexibility arena, launching a round of flexibility auctions on 12 August after successfully adopting the ElectronConnect Flexibility Market Platform (FMP).
