Blog
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Blog
Blog
15 Mar, 2021
Author
Michael Copley
With concerns growing about the reliability of the electric grid, investors are increasingly focused on technologies that can help tie together distributed energy resources like this rooftop solar array at an Amazon facility.
Source: Amazon
Two weeks after a winter storm nearly took down Texas' power grid in February, a software company called Uplight Inc. that promises to make the U.S. energy system more resilient vaulted to unicorn status with a new round of funding valuing the firm at $1.5 billion.
Power crises like the February outages that left millions of Texans freezing in the dark for days and the 2020 rolling blackouts in the western U.S. caused by extreme heat and wildfires have sparked demand for on-site energy systems like solar panels and batteries. But as the Uplight fundraising indicates, it is also accelerating investor interest in startups offering grid management platforms for a world where intermittent renewable resources, distributed solar and storage occupy larger portions of the generation mix.