Why We Invested in Amperon

April 16, 2020

We’re happy to announce that Intelis Capital has invested in Amperon, a next-generation energy intelligence platform. The seed round was led by Blackhorn Ventures and other investors joining us in this round include Powerhouse Fund in addition to return investors Notation Capital.

A few quick words on why we decided to invest in Amperon:

Dream Team

Sean is a multi-time entrepreneur in the energy space, and Abe is the prime example of exceptional talent leaving other sectors to join the energy and climate tech revolution. They truly are the best of both worlds coming together to start a great company in a sector that matters.

Every customer call we made mentioned how well Sean and Abe work together in addition to the way Amperon was revolutionizing a core part of their business. One particular example that stood out in our diligence was a customer saying, “Sean and Abe are the first team we’ve worked with that took my problem and solved it better than I could have imagined.”

More Data, More Problems

We’re firm believers that the utility grid of the future will look like a traditional network instead of the top-down structure we’ve come to know.

The continued increase in smart thermostats, EV’s, home automation, and solar installations means that the traditional “load curves” utilities have used to pattern match are growing further from the truth on the ground.

As a result, regression models based on a set of outdated variables and lagging indicators should be replaced by models that consume and compute numerous sources of data in real-time.

Power Supply is Increasing in Volatility

The explosion of new variable generation resources like solar and wind combined with the development of a networked grid explained above means supply and demand are increasingly mismatched. The result is more price volatility in the wholesale power markets.

Several studies, including a recent one from the Lawerence Berkeley National Lab, have shown that renewables are impacting wholesale power markets. These variable resources are making wholesale energy prices more volatile than ever and could render current modeling techniques obsolete.

In addition to helping reduce this volatility, Amperon’s models could eventually play a large role in helping utilities and PUC’s understand the consequences of deploying new generation resources and smart meter infrastructure.

Power Procurement and Trading are Big Business

As you probably know, large banks like Goldman and JP Morgan have teams dedicated to trading power.

You may not realize, that major utilities and retail providers have similar businesses that are core to their financial performance.

Some of the largest retail energy providers and utilities have hedging exposures to power that range from $50-100M+ in value. One swing in the wrong direction and the losses become substantial.

We’re confident Amperon is the type of solution utilities, retail providers, and financial institutions will rely on in the future as prediction becomes more difficult.

Please join us in welcoming Amperon into the Intelis Capital community as we look forward to helping them grow into the platform for power supply and demand forecasting

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