Samsung bets this island startup can tame the grid with software and batteries

The electrical grid has changed more in the last decade than in the preceding five.

“The electrical grid has changed more in the last decade than in the preceding five”

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Solar, wind, and batteries have pushed power generation away from monolithic producers.

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But fundamentally, the grid still suffers from the same challenges.

“The problem on the grid is a peak problem.

Most of the time you’re okay, you have plenty of power.

But in those peak hours you might not have enough,” Michael Phelan, co-founder and CEO of GridBeyond, told TechCrunch.

To expand its portfolio, GridBeyond recently raised a €12 million ($13.8 million) equity round led by Samsung Ventures, the company exclusively told TechCrunch.

Other participating investors include ABB, Act Venture Capital, Alantra’s Energy Transition Fund, Constellation Technology Ventures, EDP, Energy Impact Partners, Enterprise Ireland, Klima, Mirova, and Japanese electronics and software company Yokogawa.

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GridBeyond has been building hardware and software to stitch together disparate parts of the grid to behave as larger virtual power plants.

“The electrical grid has changed more in the last decade than in the preceding five”

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The startup already manages around 1 gigawatt of solar, batteries, wind, and hydropower, and on the demand side, it has “several gigawatts” across commercial and industrial facilities, Phelan said.

It also opens up new possibilities for data centers.

Many data centers don’t draw power continuously, instead peaking during AI training.

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These events can cause oscillations on the grid — “you know the thing that collapsed the Spanish grid, which is not what people want,” Phelan said.

Batteries located at data centers can absorb much of this load, smoothing out the facility’s profile on the grid so it doesn’t cause unwanted fluctuations.