- SnerpaPower has secured €3.4 million in financing, with Encevo, an energy company from Luxembourg, leading the fundraising effort to support the company’s expansion across Europe.
- At the moment, the company’s software accounts for more than 1% of the electricity used by industries in the EU.
- SnerpaPower was founded by two seasoned experts from Iceland who regard electricity as a commodity to be traded, not merely a fixed cost.
Almost all of Iceland’s energy comes from renewable sources. Based on this observation, two energy experts concluded that Europe’s industrial sector needed assistance not only in producing clean electricity but also in managing its use in real time. To address this need, they founded SnerpaPower in Reykjavík, a company that has already raised €3.4 million to expand its platform throughout Europe.
A €3 million seed round of financing was led by Encevo, an energy company from Luxembourg, which earns more than €3 billion per year. Crowberry Capital and BackingMinds, the existing investors, also kept their support. The fundraising was completed with a €400,000 grant from Iceland’s Technology Development Fund, provided by Vöxtur.
SnerpaPower has now announced its second funding round. Tech Funding News previously covered the €2.2 million seed round it completed in 2023, which was also co-led by Crowberry and BackingMinds.
According to Íris Baldursdóttir, chief executive and co-founder, power-intensive industries can no longer regard electricity as a fixed operating cost “since those companies which are able to adapt to changing market and grid conditions obtain a significant competitive advantage.”
Moving from grid operation to grid optimisation
Baldursdóttir and Eyrún Linnet founded SnerpaPower in January 2022; the former had previously been a system operator with Landsnet, Iceland’s transmission operator, and the latter had been in charge of the power systems at the Rio Tinto aluminium smelter in Iceland.
The platform connects factory operations directly with electricity contracts and markets. It forecasts demand and automatically adjusts electricity usage to secure lower prices or receive payment for flexibility, all while production continues.
For instance, an aluminium smelter or a data centre could allow the system to make minor adjustments to its non-essential electricity use by a few minutes or hours when prices are high, thus saving money automatically without anyone needing to intervene.
SnerpaPower’s strong position in the market
Every year, the SnerpaPower platform looks after more than 10 TWh of industrial electricity consumption at about 15 locations in the Nordic area. That amount represents more than 1% of the total electricity used by industry in the EU. Prior to receiving the most recent funding, SnerpaPower had one of the largest actively optimised portfolios of industrial electricity in the Nordics.
SnerpaPower ranks among the industry’s leading companies. For comparison, GridBeyond, based in Dublin, has raised more than €100 million across several funding rounds and manages distributed energy resources at scale, covering storage, generation, and industrial use. Similarly, Piclo, based in London, operates an independent flexibility marketplace and has secured over $100 million in contracts across the UK, Europe, Australia, and the US.
Although other platforms deal with a wide variety of assets and stakeholders, SnerpaPower focuses exclusively on industrial customers who are high electricity consumers. It helps these customers optimise their electricity use while taking their operational limits into account.
“The energy transition requires investment not only in renewable energy and infrastructure, but also in digital innovation. SnerpaPower combines deep industrial expertise with technology that helps large electricity consumers reduce costs while creating a more flexible energy system,” said Martin Wienands, venture partner at Encevo.
Jenny Ruth Hrafnsdóttir, founding partner of Crowberry Capital, added: “The team at SnerpaPower has leveraged their profound understanding of power markets to accelerate the global energy transition. Their technical mastery and vision for a sustainable future make SnerpaPower a cornerstone of our portfolio.”
“Electricity is becoming the most strategic resource, and as electricity markets grow more complex, industrial companies will compete on how intelligently they manage electricity. Since we first invested, SnerpaPower has proven to be leading this emerging category, so we are thrilled to keep on backing Íris, Auður, and their team,” concluded Sara Wimmerkranz, founding partner of BackingMinds.
