Singularity Energya SaaS platform that reports on grid carbon emissions has closed a $4.5 million round-up led by Spero Ventures and Energy Impact Partners and joined by existing investors, including Third Sphere and J Ventures.
Singularity, based in Somerville, Massachusetts, provides detailed information about the carbon intensity on the grid at any time. It also uses machine learning to predict peaks and dips in carbon intensity, allowing customers to time their energy consumption to reduce their carbon footprint.
The company initially focused on helping utility customers lower their electricity costs by reducing demand or switching to battery storage. “Three years ago, four years ago, the battery wasn’t really cheap enough to cover all the costs, was it?” founder and CEO Wenbo Shi said. “So we spend a lot of time modeling and coming up with new optimization algorithms to really help the customer make battery storage costs work.”
Along the way, Harvard University, an early client, asked a question. “Harvard is very sustainably driven. During one of the conversations, they brought up carbon. ‘Can you actually think of carbon as a signal?’, he recalls. “We’ve done a lot of analysis that showed that if you optimize for cost alone, you actually increase your emissions instead of reducing emissions specifically for battery storage.”
That conversation set Singularity on a new path, one that also brought the company into contact with a new set of customers: utilities.
“There are no models that accurately calculate the on-site carbon footprint,” said Vandan Divatia, vice president of transmission policy, interconnections and compliance at Eversource Energy. His company, which serves 4.4 million customers in New England, has an aggressive target to reduce carbon emissions by 2030. As the old saying goes, you can’t manage what you don’t measure.
“Today’s methodology involves very rough approximations of the region-wide emission factors based on what is generated and consumed throughout the region,” Divatia said. “Singularity allows us to use the much better location-based computation. So if a certain part of the region has more sun or more nuclear or more wind, then it should have a better carbon footprint.”
Working with utilities gave Singularity new insight into the network, Shi said, and new avenues for the company. “The vision for Singularity is that we want to become like a carbon engine, connecting the supply side with the demand side so that we are the provider of carbon intelligence,” he said. “But to get the carbon intelligence — to get the best data analytics and intelligence — you can’t achieve that goal without collaborating with the supply side.”
“Unlocking accurate and transparent data has historically been a critical catalyst for innovation of all kinds,” said Marc Tarpenning, a venture partner at Spero, who joins Singularity’s board. “Singularity brings the best quality carbon data and actionable information to the market, and we are excited to see all the different ways their products are used by their wide range of customers.”
