Advanced Microgrid gets $8.8 Million looking for $10 Million More

In a recent filing with the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission, Advanced Microgrid Solutions (AMS) indicated that it has raised $8.8 million in equity from a total of 14 individual investors out of a total offering of $18.8 million. It is unclear if or when the additional $10 million might be raised. AMS previously announced that the company has been awarded a 50-megawatt contract by Southern California Edison (SCE) to develop the first grid-scale fleet of Hybrid-Electric Buildings™ in the world.

AMS’s Hybrid-Electric Building™ project is a cutting-edge initiative to install advanced energy storage systems in commercial and industrial buildings to provide large-scale grid support to utilities. Equipping individual buildings with state-of-the-art battery technology and advanced energy management software enables the building load to be shifted from electric grid to battery power during peak demand periods. Hybrid-electric buildings are then aggregated into “fleets” and operated as a single resource, allowing SCE to shift the entire fleet of buildings to stored energy when grid resources are strained.

“Edison is changing the game with this investment in ‘customer-sited’ energy storage,” said Susan Kennedy, founder and CEO of AMS. “By harnessing the power of energy demand in commercial buildings, SCE is turning its largest energy users into its cleanest, most efficient grid resource.” AMS was founded two years ago by Kennedy, former chief of staff to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Jackie Pfannenstiel, former Assistant Secretary of the Navy (Energy, Installations & Environment) for President Obama.

“Edison is making a revolutionary investment in tomorrow’s energy grid,” Pfannenstiel said. SCE’s groundbreaking power purchase agreement calls for AMS to develop 50 MW of energy storage projects in commercial and industrial buildings throughout its West Los Angeles service territory. “Installing storage directly at the load center builds resiliency into the electric grid from the foundation up,” Pfannenstiel said. “Distributed storage provides greater reliability and lower costs to SCE customers while simultaneously providing firm, dispatchable load management to the utility.”

“Equipping a building with the technology to store and manage its own electricity turns that building into a stand-alone storage unit,” Kennedy said. “Combine a dozen buildings into a fleet and you have the utility equivalent of a peaker plant. This “dual-use” approach lowers costs for building owners and provides a clean, cost-effective resource for utilities.”

The first 10-megawatt Hybrid-Electric Building project will be installed in Irvine, California and will be completed in Q4 of 2016.