Statkraft Ventures invests into Swiss Smart Grid Solution Company DEPsys
Düsseldorf, 14 June 2016 – Statkraft Ventures GmbH invests in smart grid solutions developer DEPsys. Statkraft Ventures led a Series-A financing round with participation of VNT Management and One Creation. In this round the Swiss start-up raised approx. CHF 3 million (EUR 2.8 million) in total.
“The increasing amount of renewable energy puts enormous pressure on today’s grid infrastructure. DEPsys‘ suite of products helps grid operators to manage these changing environments and improves the utilization of the low voltage grid, while keeping costs under control” says Matthias Dill Managing Director at Statkraft Ventures. “Our conversations with DEPsys’ customers and experts in Statkraft have shown that DEPsys has a superior solution to enable more integration of renewables into the grid.”
Electrical grids have been designed for central energy production and top-down distribution to consumers. With the increase of renewable energy from decentralized solar and wind installations, as well as batteries, the electrical stability of the networks is no longer guaranteed. DEPsys smart grid solutions monitor and control the network in real-time to stabilize the system, secure the supply and optimize the energy flow using intelligent algorithms in a decentralized architecture.
"The potential for smart grid solutions is huge. In the coming years all grid-operators will have to address the problems renewable energy will create within the distribution grid" says DEPsys CEO Michael De Vivo. "Our solution has the advantage to be simple to install on existing equipment without the need for a complex network model. It will lead to lower capital and operating costs while avoiding a single point of failure."
Real-time control with GridEye
DEPsys products called GridEye are installed within the electrical cabinets of the distribution grid and are able to operate completely independent from each other. Once installed, GridEye calculates the grid’s topology on its own, which especially helps in countries where the topology is not known, like China or India. This also makes the grid more robust, when changes to the grid are made by the grid operator. Using a plug and play approach one device can be installed within 20 minutes by a technician – this saves time and cost.