Meet Story, a French startup that focuses on providing smart energy storage for commercial and industrial customers. Founded in 2023, the startup raised a seed round of €5 million earlier this year (around $5.5 million at current exchange rates) and signed its first client.
Storio believes solar panels have a bright future. But the company also wants each photovoltaic panel to come with a battery to optimize production. Your target customers are other businesses that may not feel like they have the time or expertise to put all of these technical pieces together themselves.
Instead of building or selling stand-alone batteries, Storio has a more interesting distribution strategy: After running a technical and revenue simulation, it partners with battery suppliers and civil engineering companies to convert a project into an energy storage facility. .
In recent years, many commercial and industrial companies have built large solar panel installations to reduce their electricity bills. Storio wants to complement (and take advantage of) these existing installations by offering an energy storage solution that can allow its customers to optimize their solar energy consumption, thanks to Storio's battery management software.
Once the batteries are active, Storio manages them remotely to optimize consumption, as well as normal energy storage and release.
Typically, batteries are charged during the day and energy is released in the morning and evening, but Storio's software allows for smarter things like energy management with price in mind.
“That is the starting point. You have solar panels. Solar panels produce a lot of energy in the middle of the day. Let's save it so you can use it yourself and save money,” co-founder and CEO Jean-Yves Stephan told TechCrunch.
For example, Storio can charge batteries from the network during off-peak hours so a customer doesn't need to use as much electricity during peak hours. As many industrial companies have suffered from costly energy contracts in recent years, partnering with Storio is a way to reduce the risks associated with fluctuations in energy markets.
“The core of our value proposition is optimizing energy flows, whether to generate bill savings for our customers or to generate additional revenue from the electrical grid,” Stephan said.
Storio batteries are also certified in France by Enedis and RTE to contribute to the stabilization of the network. This means that Storio can choose to release power from the fleet of batteries it manages to the network for a short period of time when there is a peak in demand, allowing it to generate revenue as a result of this contribution to the network.
In this case, it may be even more lucrative for a Storio customer to release power from their batteries rather than consume it themselves for their primary business purpose.
“Network stabilization involves quite technical mechanisms, such as stabilizing the network frequency. The network frequency must be 50 Hz. [in Europe]. When it goes a little above or goes a little below, the battery reacts. It can also be used to buy and sell energy, like an 'energy trader',” Stephan added.
The energy trading portion is an essential component of the startup's proposition, as it can greatly reduce the time it takes to pay off a Storio installation.
The company estimates that a customer can see a return on investment after five or six years, but the batteries can last up to 15 years (when they end up with about 70% of their initial capacity).
Storio and each industrial partner hosting its battery management facility will have a profit-sharing agreement. “It is very important to align interests because, as you say, we have to make some concessions. “If we were saying ‘the savings are for you, the network revenue is for Storio,’ it would be unfair,” Stephan said.
Lowercarbon Capital leads Storio's seed funding round and Bpifrance's Giant Enterprise fund also takes a stake in the startup. Kima Ventures and several enterprise angels are also investing in the startup, including the founders of Bump, Electra, Elum Vitality, Enspired and Greenly.
Several other companies that have been working on on-site battery management include Grid Beyond in the UK, Stable in Germany and Provenir in the US. As regulation varies from region to region, Storio appears well positioned to address the French market and potentially other European countries in the future.
Z1O">Source link