Upside Energy Revenue and Competitors

Every time you hit a switch, somewhere a power station has to work a little bit harder. That's fine for coal or gas - they can just burn some more fuel - but it doesn't work for renewables. The sun won't shine more brightly just because you want to boil the kettle. To fully exploit renewable generation, the system needs flexibility from somewhere else. Upside Energy provides that flexibility. Its cloud platform uses advanced algorithms and AI to coordinate devices that households and businesses already own, e.g. in backup power supplies, home battery systems, electric vehicles, hot water tanks, heating and cooling systems, to match demand for energy onto available supply. This lets the energy system make better use of both conventional and renewable generation, saving both costs and emissions. System operators pay Upside to create these savings, and it shares that revenue with the manufacturers and owners of the devices it controls. Upside was created for a challenge prize run by National Grid in 2013. It has since won numerous awards, including the £150k Shell Springboard prize for low carbon innovation in 2017. It has raised £2.4m of grant funding from Innovate UK, the Department of Business Energy and Industrial Strategy, and the EU Horizon 2020 programme, and £1.2m of seed equity from angel investors. It closed a £5.5 Series A Funding round, led by SYSTEMIQ and Legal and General Capital, on 21 December 2017. This recent funding from Innovate UK complements that funding, helping Upside to further realise its vision for a new, cleaner and more equitable, energy system.