AutoGrid nets ARPA-E funding to scale its virtual power plant management software

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AutoGrid was awarded $2.25 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) to increase the scalability and electric vehicle (EV) management capabilities of its Flex Virtual Power Plant (VPP) platform. The expanded Flex capabilities include scaling real-time co-optimization up to 100,000 assets, and expanding the platform’s features and functionality for EV fleet management.

AutoGrid is currently supporting the buildout of the world’s largest VPP by asset volume in Japan with local partner ENERES, and offers its Flex platform for EV fleet owners and power providers to manage networks of charging stations.

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“Asset owners and power providers today face a greater number and diversity of distributed energy resources than ever before, and optimizing them requires flexible solutions that can handle increasingly complex networks,” said Rahul Kar, General Manager and VP – New Energy for AutoGrid. “The Department of Energy’s award serves as pivotal support of our Flex platform, and will help further our work boosting flexibility and maximizing value streams from storage, renewables, electric vehicles, and other distributed assets.”

AutoGrid received this competitive award from ARPA-E’s Seeding Critical Advances for Leading Energy technologies with Untapped Potential (SCALEUP) program, building on ARPA-E’s primary focus of supporting the scaling of transformational and disruptive technologies across the full spectrum of energy applications. This is the second time AutoGrid has received ARPA-E support, having previously been awarded $3.5 million by the office’s Green Electricity Network Integration (GENI) program in 2012.

With over 5,000 MW of assets under contract, and experience of managing distributed energy resources (DERs) in 12 countries, AutoGrid is the leading provider of flexibility management solutions globally. AutoGrid Flex is ranked as the #1 Virtual Power Plant Platform in the world according to the 2020 global ranking published by industry-leading research firm Guidehouse Insights.

— Solar Builder magazine

[source: https://solarbuildermag.com/news/autogrid-nets-arpa-e-funding-to-scale-its-virtual-power-plant-management-software/]