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With Camus Energy’s local grid management platform, utilities are meeting new community and clean energy goals.
SAN FRANCISCO (July 20, 2021) -- Camus Energy, a leading provider of advanced grid management technology, announced today it has secured $16 million in a Series A, led by Park West Asset Management and joined by Congruent Ventures, Wave Capital and other utility and venture investors. Camus will leverage the operating capital to expand its grid management software platform to meet growing demand from utilities and service providers across North America.
As local utilities look to save money and increase the use of clean energy by tapping into low-cost and low-carbon local resources, Camus’ grid management platform provides connectivity between the utility’s operations team, its grid-connected equipment, and customer devices -- from substations and transformers to rooftop solar systems and smart water heaters. Grid operators can then orchestrate utility-owned and consumer-owned resources from a unified interface, supporting grid reliability and resilience while compensating local resource owners.
Serving a growing base of close to half a million utility customers across the U.S. West, Camus is seeing success with electric cooperatives who aim to become Distribution System Operators, like Holy Cross Energy in Colorado and Kit Carson Electric Cooperative in New Mexico. With a strong commitment to providing new benefits and cost savings to their members, these power providers are focused on leveraging new technologies to make the grid clean, reliable, resilient and equitable.
“As local accountability, clean energy integration and the ability to actively shape energy loads rise as crucial priorities for utilities, Camus’s unique focus on meeting the changing needs of the utility community has already attracted forward-looking utilities focused on lowering costs while increasing clean energy penetration,” said Congruent Ventures Managing Director Abe Yokell. “It’s exciting to see what’s happening within Camus’s growing customer base, where electric cooperatives are pursuing 100 percent clean energy goals and using Camus’ technology to operate grids that better serve the needs of their members.”
A prime example of this new era of inclusive energy is Holy Cross Energy (HCE), a member-owned electric cooperative that recently announced its “Journey to 100%” clean energy goal. The cooperative aims to provide its members with 100% carbon-free power supply by 2030, one of the nation’s most aggressive decarbonization targets. With a mix of clean energy PPAs and local renewable energy assets, such as community and consumer-owned solar arrays and energy storage, HCE plans to utilize Camus’s platform to support greater use of local clean energy resources. HCE is also using the platform to manage peak energy demand, integrate increasing amounts of solar generation, and electrify buildings and transportation, helping local communities meet their decarbonization goals.
“Holy Cross Energy is leading the responsible transition to a clean energy future with reliability, affordability and equity for all our members,” said HCE’s President and CEO Bryan Hannegan. “The Camus grid orchestration platform is already helping us manage our local clean energy resources and the HCE electric distribution grid in a more flexible and cost-effective manner, while enabling our members and their communities to adopt distributed energy resources to meet their economic, environmental and energy resilience needs.”
The Camus founding team spent close to two decades at Google, where they were instrumental in creating the design philosophy and systems engineering approach for Google’s global high-reliability computing platform. Now at Camus, they are stepping into the center of full data integration and integrated control within the grid environment.
“From our vantage point, we see a fundamental shift happening within the electric utility segment, and it’s one that releases the old image of consumers as ratepayers and instead sees them as community members,” said Camus CEO and Co-Founder Astrid Atkinson. “It’s a new era of inclusive energy and our community-centric utility customers and service providers are using the Camus platform to provide their communities a meaningful way to collectively participate in our nation’s clean energy transition.”
Camus Energy enables the community-led transition to a zero-carbon grid by empowering electric utilities with system-wide visibility and advanced controls, inclusive of utility-owned and customer devices. Leveraging the distributed systems approach pioneered by Camus’ founders at Google, the company’s software platform enables operators to more reliably, securely, and cost effectively manage a changing grid. To learn more about Camus Energy, visit https://camus.energy/
Mission Control Communications for Camus Energy
camus@mission2.com
