Wenbo Shi never imagined that Singularity Energy, a carbon intelligence platform that just secured a $4.5 million seed round, would concentrate on a greenhouse gas. But after speaking with a customer, he had a whole different perspective on his product, his business, and the kind of clients it now attracts. To be honest, the path was truly customer-driven. I had no idea about carbon when I founded the business three years ago,” Shi remarked. “The initial concept I had for the Singularity was to implement intelligent control of batteries, EV charging, and other such devices. How can I save money for the customers? Will always be the goal of battery control.
When partnering with the Harvard Innovation Lab, which contains entrepreneurial tools for Harvard Business School students, a few years ago, Shi and Singularity had that objective in mind. The institution was trying to connect a battery to the building’s roof’s solar panels. “They mentioned carbon in one of the discussions. Is it possible to think about carbon as a signal? Shi remembers them enquiring. In addition to saving money, the institution intended to build a battery to reduce the carbon imprint of the campus.
Shi remembered, “I had never considered carbon because I was like, ‘Oh, I’m a power system person.'” But after speaking with Harvard, “I thought, ‘Oh, that’s a very fantastic idea.’ Knowing the state of the electrical grid’s cleanliness or squalor makes it seem like another control signal to me. It’s an optimization target, therefore integrating it with the program should be simple. It came out that the math for Harvard’s battery experiment was altered by using carbon as a control signal. After switching to assessing the grid’s carbon emissions on an hourly basis as opposed to the more usual annual averages, Shi had realized that optimizing for cost alone would increase pollution.
A $4.5 million seed round of funding for Singularity Energy, a SaaS platform that tracks carbon emissions for the electrical grid, has been concluded. Spero Ventures and Energy Impact Partners led the round, and it was also supported by other existing investors including Third Sphere and J Ventures. The Somerville, Massachusetts-based company Singularity offers comprehensive data on the current carbon intensity on the grid. Customers may schedule their energy consumption to reduce their carbon footprints since it employs machine learning to forecast peaks and troughs in carbon intensity.
