For years, the standard answer to a tight power grid was to build another power plant. Voltus, a San Francisco company, is raising money on a different bet: that the spare capacity is already sitting in buildings, batteries and factories, and just needs organising.
The company announced on 8 October that it had raised $225 million in a Series D round, a late-stage venture financing. Voltus described the round as oversubscribed. Generation Investment Management led it, with Activate Capital and the commodity trader Vitol as co-leads. Broadscale Group, Climate Investment, NGP, Ajax Strategies and All Aboard Fund also invested.
Voltus runs what the industry calls a virtual power plant. It taps unused capacity in batteries, cooling systems and industrial processes at thousands of businesses and homes, and sells it into electricity markets every day. Participants that cut, shift or supply power can lower their bills and earn revenue.
The money is meant to support a target of 20 gigawatts by 2030. pv magazine USA reports the company’s current portfolio is more than 8.5 GW. Much of the growth is expected from its Bring Your Own Capacity programme in the PJM and MISO markets, alongside expansion across the US and Canada. PJM is the grid operator covering much of the eastern US, and MISO covers much of the central US.
Under that programme, large power users pay for capacity gathered from homes and businesses. In June, Google became the first customer, in an agreement to aggregate up to 100 MW of distributed resources a year in PJM. Voltus has also partnered with Sunrun to supply capacity from home solar and battery systems for hyperscaler deals. Hyperscalers are the very large data-centre operators.
Demand is the backdrop. The North American Electric Reliability Corporation expects peak demand to grow 24% over the next decade, more than double the growth it forecast two years ago. “Electricity is now the constraint behind almost every major ambition we have, but it doesn’t have to be,” said Dana Guernsey, Voltus’s chief executive.
Investors framed the deal around data centres. Dave Easton, a partner at Generation Investment Management, said Voltus helps the AI buildout meet its energy needs while reducing pressure to build new fossil-fuel infrastructure. There is also a market forecast behind the pitch. An RMI analysis suggests virtual power plants could account for up to 60 GW of capacity by 2034.
Voltus was founded in 2016, so the company has been selling this idea for a decade. That history gives it market access, but it also means the 20 GW goal rests heavily on large corporate buyers signing up for capacity programmes that are still new. Voltus did not disclose its valuation.
