AMMP Technologies, the operations platform for decentralized renewable energy systems, has raised €1.15 million in venture funding. The seed round was led by Point Nine Capital (early investor in B2B SaaS companies such as Zendesk and Typeform), with participation from Africa-focused Raba Partnership and Musha Ventures. The company’s ambition is to be the software platform underpinning tomorrow’s energy infrastructure, supporting the rapidly accelerating global shift from fossil fuels to decentralized renewable energy.
Founded in 2018, AMMP’s current focus is on emerging markets, where each year over €50 billion is spent on diesel generation, according to the IFC, and where cheaper, cleaner renewables are rapidly replacing this legacy spend.
For instance as of today, only 10-20% of Nigerian households can rely on the grid, while the vast majority of the population still uses privately managed diesel generators. The rapid development and decrease in costs of PV/battery hybrid systems has led to the emergence of a new generation of energy service companies that install, monitor and operate these systems remotely. These can now offer much more reliable energy at prices on par with the centralized utilities.
AMMP works with some of the most advanced companies in this space, such as Daystar, Rensource, and PowerGen. The platform enables remote operations for nearly 1,000 renewable energy generation systems across 17 countries on four continents, from Colombia, through to Sierra Leone and Kenya, to Myanmar. AMMP supports a wide range of assets, from rural mini-grids with battery storage, to complex megawatt-scale PV-diesel hybrid plants, to telecoms towers.
As demand for AMMP’s services grows, the new capital will allow the company to expand its customer footprint while further developing its suite of solutions. In particular by adding further vendor integrations and partnerships, as well as launching a solution targeted at energy for telecoms infrastructure. AMMP’s solutions enable users to minimize system downtimes, proactively plan maintenance, and obtain reliable insights into system performance. Overall, the use of AMMP has been shown to reduce OPEX by 30%.
As Svet Bajlekov, co-founder and CEO, put it: “Our customers are already driving the renewable energy transition at an unprecedented pace. We are proud to work alongside them, providing them the digital tools to scale faster than ever. This is especially relevant in the face of the current economic headwinds, and indeed restrictions on physical movement. In turn, we are excited to be bringing on board the leading investors in the B2B SaaS space, and work with them to realize the potential scale of the opportunity ahead of us.”
AMMP’s senior team builds on a rich set of experiences in the sector. The founders began their work at E.ON Off-Grid Solutions, deploying and operating mini-grids for rural electrification across Africa. Having experienced first-hand the challenges of running renewable energy systems in remote environments, they set to work on a technical solution to enable smarter operations. As AMMP’s reach grew, the potential of a high-quality SaaS solution to have a transformational effect on the market became apparent.
“Energy generation is increasingly relying on decentralized systems using renewables. Conversations with multiple emerging utility companies show the pace at which this is happening in developing countries and how important AMMP’s platform is for these to run their operations. We’ve been impressed by the team’s deep insight into the problem and are looking forward to joining them on their journey to become the backbone of the next generation of utility companies”, said Louis Coppey, Principal at Point Nine.
George Rzepecki of The Raba Partnership added: “At Raba, we seek out founders focused on solving large, foundational problems. So we felt an immediate alignment with the team at AMMP. African countries have the opportunity to reimagine their energy inputs and meet their significant and growing needs through renewables. We are excited to partner with the AMMP team and be part of building a software-powered operating system to advance renewable energy globally.”
