Synergi has raised €800K in pre-seed funding from Finnish VC Lifeline Ventures and German VC APX. The Finnish startup builds software to help households reduce their energy costs and to avoid CO2 by making electricity consumption more innovative and flexible.
Lifeline Ventures led the round. Moreover, Synergi is APX’s first investment in Finland. The funding will be used to develop Synergi’s technology further.
Get paid for going green
Synergi was founded during the summer of 2022 by Antti Hämmäinen, Harri Iisakka, and Petrus Holm. It helps individuals consume electricity in a smart and flexible manner, thereby boosting the energy transition and helping with grid imbalance. The company aggregates energy resources found in homes and enables them to participate in the demand response markets.
Flexible electricity consumption and demand response may assist in relieving some of the problems associated with increasing electricity costs and an imbalanced power system.
According to Synergi, demand response means transferring electricity consumption from hours of high load and price to a more affordably priced time. It is needed because the supply and demand of the electricity grid must always be at a near-perfect balance.
“In particular, demand response can help to manage spikes in demand during peak hours, while flexible electricity consumption enables customers to shift their usage away from times of high demand and towards times of lower demand,” says the company.
To begin with, individuals can connect their electric vehicles (EVs) or plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) and smartly charge them. By next year, Synergi will let people connect and utilise their solar production, heat pumps, water boilers, and other important home energy resources to the platform.
Antti Hämmäinen, the CEO of Synergi, says, “The energy crisis we are facing this winter poses a new kind of threat to the electricity grid-energy becoming a scarcity at certain times. This is naturally a problem we acknowledge with our product. However, the bigger problem we are targeting is the disparity between electricity supply and demand, which will grow as we move increasingly towards sustainable and inflexible energy sources in the upcoming years, such as wind power and nuclear power.”
“While sustainable energy supply can’t be controlled that easily, we have to control the demand to keep the grid in balance. We aim to provide flexibility to the markets and while doing so, we can also lower the emissions from the grid. By giving consumers more choice and control over how they use energy, we can collectively make a difference,” he further adds.
The company aims to launch its service to a wider audience in Finland during early 2023 and in one other target market at a later stage.
Investors
Lifeline Ventures is a Helsinki-based early-stage VC. It was founded by serial entrepreneurs and works with early-stage companies in funding, sales, technology, strategy, and operations. To date, it has invested in over 100 companies, including companies such as Wolt, Smartly and Supercell. The VC’s investment ticket size ranges from €100K to €2M and participates in angel, seed and series A rounds.
Whereas, APX is based in Berlin and is backed by Axel Springer and Porsche. It supports and partners with the most ambitious pre-seed startups from Europe and beyond – often as their first investor. Its notable investments include companies such as N26 and getquin.
