Apr 28, 2020
Contrarian Ventures Leads an Investment in Intelligent EV Charging Startup In Balance Grid
We are pleased to announce a 950.000 euro investment in intelligent electric vehicle charging solutions company Inbalance grid. We were joined by a number of investors in the seed round to help the company launch its platform. Inbalance grid’s business model makes it cost-effective and profitable to invest in charging infrastructure while drivers benefit from a reasonable mileage rate.
Investment was led by Contrarian Ventures, with the majority of investment, coming from venture capital fund Koinvesticinis fondas which invests along-side business angels and other funds. Investors joining the company round include Mantas Mikuckas, the cofounder of the first unicorn Vinted founded in Lithuania as well as Ernestas Petkevicius seasoned angel investor.
Inbalance grid’s core business is about a scalable end to end solution to help businesses, retailers and local communities who want to provide electric vehicle charging services and contribute to all-important (and gradual) switch from combustion engine vehicles to electric, thus making their local environment more sustainable.
The charging stations come with a modular and customizable design, providing the ability to personalise their entire range of charging units by maintaining and promoting your brand identity. Furthermore, the platform is able to perform intelligent load balancing which is the most efficient method of charging multiple electric vehicles without expanding costly grid connection infrastructure. This allows alleviating the local electric grid when it is strained, as well as enables the customers to benefit from participating in the load balancing market.
“Implementation of the latest hardware and software solutions, the creation of new technologies allowed us to develop the new generation of charging stations that ensures smooth communication with existing power capacity at a specific location. Communication between users which show the actual consumption and demand at a specific time helps to develop a more effective model, where there would be no necessity to increase the power main. Such communication creates an opportunity to build multiple charging stations in places where it was impossible before and, for example, enables apartment tenants to charge their EV’s today without investment into costly infrastructure and without increasing the risk of blackouts. The possibility to charge EV’s in residential areas at low costs contribute to growing EV adoption and reducing mobility based CO2 emissions. The ability to “fill-up” as many electric vehicles, at the most effective electric rate and within the limits of existing electric infrastructure, is essential to enable a real transition at scale,” says Nerijus Šiaulys co-founder and CTO of Inbalance grid.
The system platform provides businesses and local authorities with real-time diagnostics to allow them to monitor each charging unit performance, usage and running costs, as well as control them. The stations will allow Mode 3 standard charging speed option.
“It has become evident that the more important challenge for electric car adoption is not as much range anxiety, but rather that of sufficient charging infrastructure. The core mindset of Inbalance grid team is how to enable sustainable charging at a scale of adoption that would compare to current internal combustion engine vehicles. By using their intelligent charging solution, businesses, be it retail or real estate operators, for example, can keep their customers happy by offering essential services while creating a new income stream and making the premises more sustainable at the same time,” says Tomas Kebla, Principal at Contrarian Ventures.
„Charging infrastructure will be a crucial part of our journey to a climate-neutral economy by 2050, therefore we appreciate the opportunity to invest and support in Inbalance grid team. This investment is the first under our fund’s financial instrument which is allocated for transport development“, — says Viktorija Vaitkevičienė, CEO at Koinvesticinis fondas.
Inbalance grid was founded in 2019 by three co-founders: Nerijus Šiaulys, Aurimas Pauga and Simonas Stankus. Having experienced the challenges of owning an electrical vehicle today and correctly assuming the future challenges as the pace of electric vehicle adoption increases, they decided to create a platform and business model that would solve transition at scale.
The team believes that in order to scale the platform, it needs to have sustainable economics. Having a good understanding of the driving habits of electric car owners, as well as benefits for the businesses with the most potential for deploying Inbalance grid infrastructure, they are embarking to change the perception of communities that charging can be as easy and accessible as parking your car.
Inbalance grid platform allows to fully utilize the available energy capacity of a location at any given time by intelligently and efficiently distributing electricity demand among active consumers, essentially charging tens of cars at a much lower cost compared to fast-charge infrastructure.
”Our technology is based on both hardware and software solutions. We have developed charging infrastructure that is built on a cluster system with a master and slave design concept, where the majority of the components are off the shelf and managed by Inbalance grid software. Innovations in our software development allow us to ensure the distribution of electrical energy between all consumers through dynamic load management and virtual queues. At the same time, our software has functionality which ensures power main balancing, integration with 3rd parties as well as payment solutions. Smart software that is enabled by unique hardware allows us to create the most appropriate and effective model for current electric grid infrastructure that ensures demand response between all consumers,’ shares Aurimas Pauga, co-founder and CIO of Inbalance grid.
In the future, the team also wants to scale the platform, where they can help in balancing the grid (hence the name) not only at bound locations but over large areas, such as districts or municipalities, as well.
“The pace of EV adoption requires charging solutions that can keep up in terms of fleet growth and resulting energy demand in a sustainable way,” says Simonas Stankus, co-founder and CEO of Inbalance grid. “Providing an end-to-end platform that can take into consideration the whole electron journey from an energy source to batteries, as well as predict demand and adapt the EV chargers accordingly, is becoming an essential part of such services. Having investors who understand these areas will enable us to grow and contribute our part to the sustainable energy transition.”
Rokas Pečiulaitis, Managing Partner at Contrarian Ventures explains: “The sustainable energy transition is the core of Contrarian Ventures investment strategy and focus. This is in line with our goal to back outstanding founding teams building innovative technology solutions accelerating sustainable energy transition and enabling further EV adoption. We are excited to support Inbalance grid team from the beginning of their journey and we expect them to become a leading player shaping EV charging ecosystem and enabling a necessary availability of charging infrastructure.
ABOUT IN BALANCE GRID
Founded in 2019, Inbalance grid is developing intelligent electric vehicle charging solutions for businesses and grid operators. The company designs, customizes, produces, and implements solutions that utilize existing electrical capacities and manages them through cloud-based software and controllers integrated on their charging points.
