Sophia Wennstedt is Creating the World's Most Accessible Smart Home Battery

Hi, climate leaders 👋 

Welcome back to another issue of The Climate Scout!

Today at a glance:

• Introducing Blip Energy

• Detailing their business model, tech, traction and team

• Why do we need this now?

• What is the climate impact?

• How you can support them!

-  Angelica 💜

Featured Startup: Blip Energy

Today's climate startup is Blip Energy. Blip is creating a new energy platform that is smart, affordable, and flexible. It can be used in any home without needing permits or professional installation. Blip helps with backup power at home and provides useful data and tools for improving the grid.

Blip Energy Fast Facts

Headquarters

Chicago, IL

Technology

Blip wants every home to have smart home energy storage. This will give homes backup power and connect them to the smart grid. Even homes that are hard to reach can benefit from Blip's technology. Blip can collect data on how devices use power and how the grid performs in these homes. This data can help utilities and other organizations make better decisions about infrastructure and rebates to improve the grid.

Business Model

Blip has a business model that meets current resilience needs and focuses on the future. They combine their hardware product with data analytics and grid services. This helps keep the cost of their hardware low for households. Blip's innovative business model is able to offer a competitive price without sacrificing features. They are dedicated to meeting the needs of everyday households and improving the grid for the future.

Traction

• Total funding: $1.4M

• Secured Letter of Intent for their first 5M in revenue,

• Secured strategic investments from two of mHUB’s corporate sponsors: Invenergy and Southern Company via Nicor Gas

• Established partnerships with Renewance as a second life battery off-taker, Arrow a component distributor to source our BOM, and Leap for demand response and capacity market aggregation

• Blip has a term sheet in place for their 2M Seed round

• Selected by the Department of Energy as the prime recipient of a 1.1M award to accelerate equitable deployment of residential energy storage using low-cost repurposed battery cells

Founders

Blip's founders have a diverse range of skills and experience in various industries such as hardware development, engineering, product management, packaging, residential energy, home building, management consulting, utility operations, government affairs, and energy policy. They are dedicated to creating a better and smarter grid for everyone. Chance and Sophia strongly believe that both grassroots and top-down innovation are essential for the energy transition.

Sophia Wennstedt: Co-founder & CEO

• Recognized by Forbes 30 under 30 Energy

• Hands-on background in hardware with experience as a Mechanical Engineer and Product Manager (iRobot, Tesla, Exelon)

Chance Cobb: Co-founder & COO

• A utility industry veteran with regulatory and energy policy background (GE, ScottMadden)

Why Now?

Every day, around 500,000 Americans lose power without backup options. The power grid in the United States is vulnerable and has experienced more outages in the past two years than ever before. However, there has been a lack of innovation in energy solutions for the average household, especially for those living in multiunit buildings and low- to moderate-income households. The transition to renewable energy sources has made power generation more volatile, and unpredictable weather patterns have increased demand. Both households and utilities require power security, and the smart grid needs new tools to balance loads and prevent blackouts. Currently, residential and small commercial energy storage solutions can only handle a small portion of the available capacity.

Climate Impact

Blip helps align power consumption with renewables generation, which reduces the need for fuel burning "peaker plants" and subsequent pollution and GHG's. Blip also outfits homes with critical resilience, reducing need for fuel burning generators.

Support Blip Energy

• Investors - Blip Energy is currently raising a round and interested in connecting with investors

• Advisors - Blip Energy is open to chatting anyone interested in advising

• Co-founder - Blip energy is open to chatting with anyone interested in joining as a co-founder

   

Recent Climate Rounds

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• Fourjaw raised a $1.8M Seed round to accelerate product development and invest in its technology and customer success teams, creating seven new jobs

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• Renewable Metals raised a $8M Seed round to address low levels of lithium battery materials recovery

• Helio raised a $5.17M Seed round to advance its cloud computing platform

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Cool Tools

• Fractional Climate - Find fractional climate talent for your company, fast & free 

• Net Zero Insights - Market Intelligence on Climate Tech Startups

• Moonarch - Meet investors for your startup for free

• Remote Climate Jobs - Get remote jobs delivered to your inbox every Wednesday

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