Recurve Aims to Take Virtual Power Plants to the Next Level with $18M in Funding

There are many forms of renewable energy, and they have become far more commonplace in recent years. Virtual power plants work to integrate those various sources so that a single control system can manage them. Then there is Recurve, which is looking to make things even better by providing a platform that takes care of planning, procurement, and demand flexibility for these virtual power plants. Learn more about how Recurve works and the benefits it provides by taking a look at the press release below.

Recurve, the open-source platform that enables planning, procurement, and demand flexibility for virtual power plants, today announced an $18M Series B investment round. New investors in the round include Calpine Energy Solutions, Quantum Innovation Fund, and Toshiba Energy Systems & Solutions, with additional participation from existing investor Energy Foundry.

Recurve will use the investment to accelerate the transition to clean energy by reducing stress on the grid during periods of high demand. With more than half of the US facing an energy supply crisis this summer, Recurve’s open source model will connect customers with resources to reduce and reschedule their electricity use in ways that stabilize the grid.

“The participation of investors who are deeply embedded in the energy ecosystem validates our vision and the clean energy transition at large,” said Matt Golden, CEO, Recurve. “The idea that we can integrate behind-the-meter energy resources such as energy efficiency, demand response, building electrification, and EV charging into unified virtual power plants on par with supply-side resources is no longer hypothetical. We are doing it now, and the market is accelerating quickly.”

“At Calpine Energy Solutions, we build power plants, provide retail energy, and power data systems for Community Choice Aggregators who are amongst the most innovative electricity providers in the world,” said Drake Welsh, Senior Vice President, Calpine Energy Solutions. “Our partnership and investment in Recurve help our customers accelerate the growth of virtual power plants and put their data to work in new and valuable ways.”

In partnership with MCE, Recurve created the first FLEXmarket to connect solution providers (otherwise known as “aggregators”) to markets that pay for the grid value of their projects. Following Governor Newsom’s Emergency Proclamation to Expedite Clean Energy Projects in California last summer, the California Public Utilities Commission approved the creation of a new statewide program (the “Market Access program”) based on Recurve’s innovative FLEXmarket platform. In July 2022, Recurve and Pacific Gas and Electric Company (“PG&E”), California’s largest utility, launched PG&E’s Market Access program.

Designed to reduce demand at peak times, FLEXmarket helps mitigate summer blackouts, like the rotating outages some Californians experienced during Summer 2020. FLEXmarket provides market access to new technologies and innovative business models by paying for performance based on how users reshape or reduce load during high-demand periods when the grid is most at risk of an energy shortfall.

In order to optimize demand flexibility technology, Recurve is working across the country and internationally to utilize newfound telemetry from recent smart-meter investments. As grid reliability becomes an increasingly global issue, Recurve is tapping into a tangible solution through managing electricity usage to match supply.

And, the $4.3B investment from the Inflation Reduction Act will catalyze the implementation of energy retrofits through measured performance rebates, which will allow utilities to procure more targeted, time-specific savings and treat aggregated behind-the-meter resources as Virtual Power Plants equal to generated energy.

About Recurve

Recurve’s open-source platform and revenue-grade data creates demand flexibility markets that enable virtual power plants, giving utilities and aggregators the confidence they need to treat distributed energy resources as grid assets. In its mission to accelerate the transition to a clean energy economy, Recurve integrates behind-the-meter demand flexibility resources into the emerging carbon-free energy grid, providing companies with the real-time transparency needed to revolutionize the way energy efficiency is measured, deployed, and procured. By paying for actual hourly metered performance, Recurve’s market model dramatically reduces red tape, makes flexibility more lucrative for aggregators, and opens the door to a wide range of technologies and business models to better serve customers. Recurve is accessible across the United States and growing globally. To learn more about Recurve, visit Recurve.com.

The original press release can be found on PR Newswire.