suena, a German startup specialised in AI-driven optimization and power trading services for flexible energy assets such as large-scale battery storage, has successfully closed its €3 million seed funding round.
The round was co-led by the Santander InnoEnergy Climate Fund and Smart Energy Innovationsfonds of Energie 360, with additional participation from the existing shareholders EIT InnoEnergy, Raakwark Kaptaal, and Business Angels. Founded in 2021, suena will use the capital to broadly introduce its innovative AI-based “Autopilot” software solution to markets across Europe, further extend its functionality and expand the team with international top talent.
“suena was born out of a vision to be a catalyst for the energy transition,” said CEO Dr. Lennard Wilkening. “Energy storage capacity at scale and its efficient deployment is a crucial part of that. With the suena Autopilot, suena offers a 100% software-based and fully automated trading-as-a-service platform for energy storage and renewable energy asset owners, making crucially important storage capacity and renewable energy available when and where it’s needed the most.”
The Autopilot developed by suena represents a revolutionary approach to monetize flexible energy assets on power and balancing markets. Navigating these markets requires dealing with an extensive range of variables to optimize trading strategies, as well as the techno-economic knowledge of energy storage technologies to favor strong business case and investment decisions.
Current solutions, with their limited automation degree, fall short in this rapidly transforming market. To address this challenge, suena has developed a sophisticated multi-market optimization and trading software. Based on price and market forecasts the dispatch schedule of the energy storage, which specifies when to buy and sell energy at which market, is optimized across various power and balancing markets.
The Autopilot is designed to handle the immense complexity of efficient and strategic power trading on multiple markets: it processes millions of data points every minute, continuously optimizes trading strategies, and reacts in real-time to fluctuations in the power grid. With this trading strategy profits are maximized, and risks minimized. suena’s modular software design allows to quickly adapt to new market designs and regulations of different countries in this fast-changing environment. This flexibility enables suena not only to be storage technology agnostic but also to rapidly scale their operations globally.
“The combination of innovative technology, an efficient expert team, and the attractive, fast-growing market for energy storage and renewables further convinced our investment decision. suena’s technology provides a much-needed solution to help asset owners and operators to run energy storages in a profitable manner. This way suena taps into the still unused potential of already existing flexibilities in the grid, to integrate renewable energies and fast track the energy transition now,” commented Giovanni Bologna, from Santander InnoEnergy Climate Fund.
As lead investors in the seed round, Santander InnoEnergy Climate Fund and Smart Energy Innovationsfonds of Energie 360 have pledged their support to suena’s mission of innovating in the energy sector. Their investment, complemented by the contributions of EIT InnoEnergy, Raakwark Kaptaal and Business Angels, brings together innovation-centric investors who are confident in suena’s strategy.
Metin Zerman, from Energie360, added: “Our investment in suena shows our confidence in a talented team of founders who are driving the energy transition with their innovative trading software. Their AI-powered solution is revolutionizing the use of energy storage and strengthening our energy grid, exemplifying the positive impact of technology in the energy sector.“
“The seed funding marks a pivotal moment for suena,” said Miguel Wesselmann, CFO of suena. “It’s a testament to the confidence our investors have in our vision and technology. This investment will bring us closer to our goal of revolutionizing the world of power trading to enable efficient energy storage operation. Working on this highly relevant topic, suena is in the middle of an exciting growth phase: the investment supports suena in expanding the team, bringing on board motivated and highly skilled talents who are passionate about driving the energy transition forward.”
