What is Peak Power’s contribution to a greener world, in the context of the crucial role of electricity grids?
Climate change is reshaping our world in big ways. We can limit further warming, but we can’t reverse what has already happened. What Peak Power has done is developed a tech platform for the building, energy, and transportation sectors, which are responsible for 70% of global emissions, to help them become part of the solution. We turn commercial buildings and industrial facilities, as well as electric vehicles and batteries, into decentralized, mini power plants. We work with our customers to not only achieve their economic goals but also their net zero goals - all through one platform. On a grand scale, this will result in cleaner, more reliable, and more affordable electricity. We believe in making traditional fossil fuel power plants obsolete through decentralized energy. By aligning our customers’ net zero goals and economic goals, the grid gets access to a new digital asset class which lays the groundwork for decommissioning dirty fossil fuel plants.
Global energy grids are fundamentally centralized at the moment, how far are we from a system better equipped for high volume electrification and how “smart” can the grid become?
The tough part of energy is it’s an industry that’s slow to evolve. We have made some tremendous strides in the short-term, but to use a baseball analogy, we are in the first inning of a nine-inning game as far as grid decentralization is concerned. We’re just at the start of the journey and it’s going to take time, and technology and innovation, which will be the catalyst to advancing the energy transition, will take time to realize a full grid modernization. While we’ve made great progress, energy is a risk-averse industry that cannot afford to go offline and must proceed cautiously. A lot more has to happen before every house or commercial business can be considered a potential grid asset, but long-term policies such as the recently passed IRA in the U.S. will help us get there faster.
Policy wise the United States has just passed the Inflation Reduction Act - is this enough to spur change? Is there enough policy support now?
It’s never enough, but it’s a huge start. What the industry needs is long-term policies. Unfortunately, what happens with climate change is it gets intertwined with political agendas - there can be a large amount of uncertainty around climate policy due to it happening in fits and starts around elections. Long-term policies help businesses understand the size of the market and invest in technology and infrastructure to help drive down costs and solve bigger problems. Everyone plays a role in this, and our role is to be a software platform that can aggregate distributed energy resources and participate in the energy markets as they are forming. The role of the grid is changing, and providers from the transmission level to the distribution level will have to evolve, along with utility companies that need to expand beyond T&D to become full-fledged energy players to avoid becoming obsolete.
What types of technological innovations on the horizon are you most excited about?
We have new digital asset classes, like smart buildings, batteries, EVs, and so on, that are evolving into novel power sources. To enable these, we need three stakeholders to work together: the host site, offering a home for the asset, the financier who owns the asset, and the utility that relies on the asset’s operation. Having a platform like Peak Power’s Synergy is very valuable for the future since it allows us to work with all three types of stakeholders to manage multiple types of decentralized assets across a portfolio for both economical and environmental benefits. It’s especially valuable when you have buildings scrutinized for ESG compliance and operators need defendable, easily accessible data. The most exciting area for innovation in our view is batteries, especially when it comes to solar + storage. Once the infrastructure is built out, we’ll see great strides in mobility.
What growth potential does the solar energy and storage combo have in the green transition equation and what are the main challenges it needs to overcome?
We need to get past the boom and bust cycles that we have experienced in energy policy and give the industry clear, long-term goals. Climate has always been interlaid with policy, even more so these days, and the industry will mobilize with long-term signals. On the technology side, coherent long-term policies will encourage people to be brave and invest in world-changing innovation.
The future of clean energy is connecting solar power generation with a battery and forecasting software. I think we are moving into a future in which every building will have a battery, and while not all can accommodate rooftop solar, we’re seeing emerging technology where elements like shingles and windows are collecting solar power.
What is your vision for Peak Power and are you looking to expand outside of North America?
Geographical expansion is the most obvious way we want to grow, though the pandemic naturally changed how global we can be. The passing of the IRA and expansion of the ITC encourages us to focus on our backyard of the U.S. and Canada and ensure we’re making the most of our existing customer base, at least for the next couple of years. Over the next three to five years, the idea would be to expand into international markets like Europe and Asia as they embrace the clean energy transition. Industry-wise, mobility will play a much bigger role over the coming years, as EVs proliferate across different markets and people realize the importance of connecting EVs to the grid. Everything’s going to be bidirectional eventually, and that’s a big reason we see huge growth potential for Peak Power in the mobility space.
Looking ahead, everyone’s ability to make a difference in the energy transition starts with a lot more collaboration between governments, corporations, developers, and people. If we work together and find ways to empower people to embrace these decentralized assets, both at the utility-scale level and at a smaller scale, then we can get to a cleaner future. We’ve got to reach net-zero emissions as soon as possible and achieve our goal of making dirty fossil fuel plants obsolete, but it’s going to take everyone being on the same side and our time is limited.
