WattBuy, an online electricity marketplace that allows consumers to browse and select electricity plans in their area, today announced it has raised $3.25 million in Series A funding led by Evergy Ventures. Additional investors include Updater, Avesta Fund, Yoav Lurie, John Sherman, and Bill Gatreaux. Existing investors also participating in this round include Fort Ventures, Techstars Ventures and Powerhouse Ventures.
Each investor brings a track record in supporting companies that create solutions to decarbonize and democratize the energy value chain.
Naman Trivedi, CEO and co-founder of WattBuy said, “These funds enable us to expand our turnkey API offering within market leading real estate platforms like Updater as well as personal finance companies and energy services businesses. We’re enabling enterprises to launch their own renewable electricity marketplaces that can increase value to their existing customers.”
WattBuy’s Series A funding round follows the launch of the first ever calculator to estimate the electricity cost and carbon footprint impact for nearly every home in the United States, according to the company. This calculator incorporates several open and proprietary data sources to build a machine learning model that takes location, building characteristics, and weather data as inputs, and returns an hourly electricity usage prediction. WattBuy will continue to improve this machine learning model with the funding from this round.
“WattBuy is providing an important service to consumers by helping them find the best electricity plan for them, including factors such as price and sustainability,” said Dennis Odell, vice president at Evergy Ventures.
Over the past two decades, several state governments have deregulated their electricity markets, allowing residents to choose who provides their electricity. Today, over 140 million Americans in 14 states can use WattBuy to choose electricity providers and plans to find one that matches their preferences. On average, these residents could save $360 per year by selecting a less expensive electricity provider, says WattBuy.
Earlier this year, WattBuy initiated a Schmidt Futures-funded project in partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) to create the nation’s first complete, up-to-date database of electricity rates.
Since its founding in 2017, WattBuy has raised a total of $5 million in venture funding. The company closed its $1.5 million seed round in July 2019.
