AMS taking ‘storage to new level’ with US$34m Series B investment

Busi­ness mod­els used by Advanced Micro­grid Solu­tions (AMS), includ­ing cre­at­ing “Hybrid Elec­tric Build­ings” with ener­gy stor­age, take the indus­try to a “new lev­el”, VC investor Nan­cy Pfund has said.

Investors includ­ing actor and activist Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger, major Aus­tralian util­i­ty AGL, GE Ven­tures and Mac­quar­ie Cap­i­tal par­tic­i­pat­ed in the suc­cess­ful raise of more than US$34 mil­lion in a Series B fund­ing round, which AMS announced yesterday.

AMS said it will use the cash to scale up the deploy­ment of Arma­da, the company’s plat­form for inte­grat­ing dis­trib­uted ener­gy resources (DERs) into build­ings and con­nect­ing them to the grid. The com­pa­ny also said the funds will go towards expand­ing AMS’ pres­ence in new mar­kets. Ener​gy​-Stor​age​.News emailed an AMS rep­re­sen­ta­tive for fur­ther details on which geo­gra­phies and mar­ket seg­ments this may con­sti­tute, but did not receive a reply by the time of writing.

As with a pre­vi­ous Series A, Nan­cy Pfund at social impact invest­ing firm DBL Part­ners led the round, along­side util­i­ty-fund­ed invest­ment firm Ener­gy Impact Part­ners (EIP) and a util­i­ty, South­ern Com­pa­ny. A dis­trib­uted infra­struc­ture sub­sidiary of South­ern Com­pa­ny recent­ly formed a part­ner­ship with AMS for behind-the-meter project work.

Pfund told Ener​gy​-Stor​age​.News that there were plen­ty of rea­sons why AMS had been a pop­u­lar call for investors. The com­pa­ny is led by ener­gy indus­try vet­er­an Susan Kennedy, who had a three-year stint as a Cal­i­for­nia Pub­lic Util­i­ties Com­mis­sion­er and also served as advi­sor to Schwarzeneg­ger when he was Gov­er­nor of California.

To read the full arti­cle, vis­it Ener­gy Stor­age.