Shell Ventures and APG Asset Management (APG) join EDP Ventures in this Series B funding round to accelerate NET2GRID’s mission to become the leading residential smart energy platform.
Investors’ extensive experience in the technology and distributed energy sector worldwide provide NET2GRID with a gateway to new international markets. With the new funding NET2GRID is planning to rapidly scale the development and deployment of its platform across Europe, Australia and North America.
For APG the investment in NET2GRID fits within its Dutch energy transition portfolio ANET. ANET’s goal is to support fast-growing companies and projects that contribute to the energy transition, to optimize long term returns and maximize carbon reduction.
Zeist, The Netherlands, Monday 22 March 2021 - NET2GRID is pleased to announce that it has successfully completed a Series B funding round, in a joint effort by APG and Shell Ventures.
NET2GRID empowers utilities and energy retailers by providing actionable insights to their end customers based on the real-time analysis of their energy usage data. At the heart of NET2GRID’s product portfolio sit its cutting-edge Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning technologies that deliver unique energy insights and energy consumption predictions. NET2GRID’s clients, including E.ON, ENI, NEN Energia and Pure Energie, use NET2GRID’s SaaS and PaaS solutions to increase customer engagement, optimize marketing and operational costs, and improve energy trading models.
With this investment, NET2GRID will further optimize the customer journey and data analytics capabilities, boost the development of its peer-to-peer energy community solution, as well as its residential virtual power plant platform. The investment will also accelerate the company’s international expansion beyond the European market.
”We are proud to add these respected partners to our investor base and we welcome their long term commitment to NET2GRID’s success.”, says Bert Lutje Berenbroek, NET2GRID’s founder and CEO. “We share a vision of creating an intelligent, transparent, and cleaner energy value chain, by translating energy consumption data into smart, personalized services. These investors further complement our existing partner ecosystem, which includes Samsung, SAP, and AWS.”
“Real-time energy insight is becoming more important for consumers and utilities, creating more awareness of energy consumption and ways to become more energy-efficient”, says Nienke Vledder, senior portfolio manager ANET at APG. “These insights help balance supply and demand of increasing renewable energy coming on-line, as seen in The Netherlands generated by – amongst others - wind and sun. NET2GRID is a Dutch technology scale-up company whose data platform provides consumers with real-time energy insight, thereby stimulating the reduction of energy usage. NET2GRID’s disaggregation service and energy data platform show the true power of how digital products can play an important role in the energy transition. With APG’s investment, NET2GRID is able to scale up to expand its business and offer its product and services to more consumers and different markets. NET2GRID contributes to the energy transition and is an employer of choice for energy talents. Also, their proposition is internationally scalable, allowing the solution to be exported outside of the Netherlands too.”
“We have been very impressed by the quality of the technology and the team at NET2GRID as well as their performance to date.” says Jurgen Hornman, Investment Director at Shell Ventures. “NET2GRID provides energy retailers, OEMs and even banks with valuable real-time energy data and insights. Their SaaS offering comes at a low cost and helps to create a detailed understanding of consumer energy usage. With residential customers adding more unpredictability to their daily energy demand, for instance through distributed energy resources and electric vehicles, having real-time insight into their energy consumption and behaviour will be critical to succeed in the energy transition. For Shell, this investment aligns with our strategy to provide consumer-centric solutions. Bert and the team have partnered with several of Europe’s largest, most innovative companies and we look forward to supporting NET2GRID in scaling its solutions further in Europe and beyond.”
“We believe NET2GRID´s technology, namely its energy insights and self-service platforms, will continue to successfully support utilities across the globe to engage with their customers and contribute towards superior consumption efficiency and DERs acceleration.” says Luís Manuel, Executive Board Member at EDP Ventures. “We are thrilled to be a part of the company’s Series B round. This is another example of EDP’s commitment towards investing and supporting high growth startups, as a key enabler for the development of innovation to lead the energy transition.”
About NET2GRID
NET2GRID is an award-winning, AI enabled company that empowers utilities and energy retailers to provide actionable insights to their customers based on analysis of their energy usage data. Through our service we aim to enhance the gross margin of utilities, improve the customer engagement experience and contribute towards accelerating the world’s energy transition to a sustainable future. We provide energy suppliers the tools which enable them to service their own customers better by using the energy usage data they already possess; historical, smart meter or real time data. At the core of our expertise lies cutting edge AI machine learning services in energy insights & energy consumption prediction. Additionally, NET2GRID has in-house developed low-cost hardware to unlock real-time meter data for global markets that are self-installable. Our service is used by energy suppliers worldwide and we help them to build a loyal customer base of satisfied customers, reduce their costs and expand their business by generating upsell and cross-sell leads towards energy-saving solutions. We also help our clients include residential products like EV, PV, heat pumps into an integrated Home Energy Overview with Virtual Power Plant capabilities.
The company was founded in 2011 and holds offices in the Netherlands and Greece.
Media Contact
NET2GRID BV
Bert Lutje Berenbroek
Tel: +31 30 304 00 86
About APG
Every day APG is busy with something that already concerns millions of Dutch people and one day will concern millions more: pensions. APG strives to provide a good pension in a livable world for all participants, employers and pension funds. Together we work on a sustainable future in which we do not only look at prosperity, but also at well-being. Because pensions are about people, life and how we live together. So that we, our parents, and our children can enjoy a good income. Today, tomorrow, and beyond.
As the largest pension provider in the Netherlands APG looks after the pensions of 4.7 million participants. APG provides executive consultancy, asset management, pension administration, pension communication and employer services. We work for pension funds and employers in the sectors of education, government, construction, cleaning, housing associations, sheltered employment organizations, medical specialists, and architects. APG manages approximately €573 billion (December 2020) in pension assets. With approximately 3,000 employees we work from Heerlen, Amsterdam, Brussels, New York, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing.
Media Contact
APG Asset Management
Dick Kors
+31 (0)6 34 020 751
About Shell Ventures
Shell Ventures, founded in 1996, is the corporate venture capital arm of Royal Dutch Shell plc (“Shell”). With major offices in Europe, the USA, India and China, Shell Ventures invests in innovative technology companies, business models and growth plans to further the development of solutions and new technologies that have the potential to accelerate the energy and mobility transformation. Continuing Shell’s tradition in venture capital since 1996, Shell Ventures focuses on investments within renewable power systems (including solar, wind, connected energy and storage), new fuels for transport (including hydrogen and biofuels), mobility solutions (including e-mobility, connected mobility and freight), oil and gas technologies (including chemicals), and digital innovations where relevant to energy. Shell Ventures co-invests with other corporate investors and venture capital funds and will invest in both early -stage and late-stage (growth capital) companies.
About EDP Ventures
EDP Ventures is the corporate venture arm of EDP Group, an early-stage venture capital mainly focused on Seed and Series A aiming to support and stimulate the open innovation process in the energy sector. Currently managing more than 70M€, EDP Ventures looks for disruptive technologies and business models focusing on Renewable Power technology, Smart Grids, Energy Efficiency, Electric Mobility, Energy Storage, AI and ML, Cybersecurity, Digital and Predictive analytics. Its investment teams are located in Lisbon, São Paulo and Madrid.
Media Contact
EDP Ventures
edpventures@edp.com