Social Energy looking to raise £50m

The British start-up Social Energy has announced it is looking to raise £50 million to help it break into new markets, including Australia and Japan.

The Huddersfield-based firm has teamed up with the investment banking group Evercore for the fundraising round, which is due to close in August.

According to Social Energy, there is “strong interest” in its home energy trading platform from investors, which uses artificial intelligence (AI) to store, manage and distribute the energy generated by solar panels.

The AI learns all about the homes’ energy consumption and then automatically trades excess energy on the grid in times of peak demand.

The company claims the fully-automated platform, allows home energy trading and decreases a consumer’s electricity tariff from 14p to 4p per kilowatt hour.

The platform was launched last year, and Social Energy says it is the first of its kind to meet National Grid firm frequency response (FFR) standards.

The company said it will use the money raised to explore new territories, including Australia and Japan.

“The attraction of our model has not escaped the attention of global energy behemoths who are beginning to assess their position in a post-carbon world. Shell for example recently bought Sonnen and Limejump to attempt this in the future,” said Social Energy chief executive, Ryan Gill.

“But it isn’t purely an issue of investment, the nature of AI is it needs time to learn and that can’t be accelerated. Our AI has been developed by a team of data scientists over a six-year R&D period, this isn’t easy to replicate.

“Having an environmentally friendly home is moving up on people’s agendas. Look at solar panels for example, 1 million homes in the UK already have them installed. By joining the Social Energy Network, homes and businesses are empowered to take back control of their energy supply,” added Gill.