Rooftop solar systems, backup batteries, electric-vehicle chargers and smart thermostats and appliances make up the building blocks of virtual power plants. But developing the software that can turn thousands of these home energy devices into reliable power grid resources isn’t easy. In fact, it can take decades to perfect.
Just ask Chris Wright, senior vice president of software technology and product at Lunar Energy. As co-founder of Moixa, the U.K.-based startup that was acquired by Lunar Energy in 2021, he’s spent nearly 20 years working on batteries and the software that can optimize their value for the buildings where they are installed and the grids they’re connected to.
The Gridshare software developed by Moixa and now owned by Lunar Energy is currently managing tens of thousands of battery-equipped homes providing grid services in Japan and Europe. That puts Lunar Energy in league with a handful of large-scale virtual power plant operators, including Tesla and sonnen. “We come from a world where we’re very used to [having] tens of thousands of things” to manage, Wright said — not just batteries, but solar panels and household electricity loads.