March 4th, 2024 — Over the course of a multi-year partnership, Powerhouse has been proudly supporting DNV, a global leader in assurance and risk management. In collaboration with DNV’s corporate venture arm, DNV Ventures, Powerhouse helps identify strategic investment opportunities that address global challenges arising in the energy transition and fourth industrial revolution. DNV Ventures invests in the maritime, oil & gas, power & renewables, automotive & aerospace, food & beverages, and healthcare sectors.
“The Leap team has shown strong strategic, technical and commercial skills and have executed their vision well. We believe that Leap is the leading player in this space and we are excited to support their growth.”
In March of 2023, Powerhouse introduced DNV Ventures to Leap, a Powerhouse Ventures portfolio company that facilitates fast, automated access to energy markets for aggregated distributed energy resources (DERs). These resources are the building blocks of virtual power plants (VPPs) and demand response (DR) programs, and can add significant value both to consumers and utilities. Given DNV’s experience supporting a range of clients in the energy industry, Powerhouse believed that Leap’s solution could add strategic and complimentary value to DNV’s work in this segment. As a result of our introduction, DNV Ventures participated in Leap’s $16M round, announced on July 18th 2023.
Leap's timing is critical. A recent DOE report highlighted a path to roughly tripling the capacity of virtual power plants in the US to 80-160 gigawatts by 2030, which could meet about 10% to 20% of our peak electricity demand and save around $10 billion a year in grid-related costs. With states like Minnesota considering expanding their demand response framework to allow third party companies to recruit for enrollment, the addressable market for companies like Leap could expand significantly over the next decade.
What’s holding back virtual power plants?
While VPPs are well-positioned for growth, there are a number of barriers to wide-scale adoption, ranging from the availability of demand response programs to the process of enrollment and participation.
The market complexity of providing flexible resources through energy market grid services across various market and utility jurisdictions can be excessive for new participants. In fact, many programs have minimum load requirements that can prevent smaller distributed energy portfolios from participating.
The amount of resource that each partner can individually provide in their portfolio in each of these jurisdictions is a fraction of what a physical peaker plant might typically provide - making it burdensome for the grid to communicate with each potential participant.
How is Leap expanding virtual power plants?
Leap’s platform provides DER tech partners with a single API to participate in all of the energy markets and utility programs that Leap is integrated with.
Similarly, Leap provides utilities and power markets with a single interface to aggregated DER assets, similar to the traditional interfaces these partners are accustomed to with other conventional power plants.
The Leap Connect product streamlines program enrollment for customers as well, simplifying what is currently a complex and time consuming process.
As distributed energy resources proliferate globally, Leap is uniquely positioned to unlock and monetize the significant untapped value within the grid represented by underused VPP capacity.
Powerhouse is excited to continue working with DNV Ventures to partner with companies like Leap, and we look forward to continuing to support the work of Nermina, Kaare, Michele and the entire DNV Ventures team.
To discover how Powerhouse can expand your firm’s engagement with the climate tech startup ecosystem, reach out to us here.
Authored by Powerhouse Senior Associate, Cameron Peterkin. Special thanks to Senior Director of Technology and Client Services, Octavi Semonin.
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