Energy startup Blueprint Power raises $3.5 million Series A funding to turn buildings into revenue-generating virtual power plants

Blueprint Power, a real estate and energy tech startup, has raised $3.5 million Series A funding round to enable real estate owners to become clean energy suppliers. The latest financing was led by Congruent Ventures, MetaProp Ventures, Fred Wilson, and Brad Burnham. Founding investors Lennar and Fifth Wall Ventures also participated alongside other investors including 174 Power Global (a subsidiary of Hanwha Energy), Craig Robins (DACRA) and Urban.us and URBAN-X (BMW/MINI accelerator).

Founded in 2017 by Robyn Beavers, the New York City-based Blueprint’s mission is to accelerate the growth and financial sustainability of distributed, intelligent clean energy by helping regional groups of real estate companies transform their portfolios into power plants. The startup manages these power plants to generate excess supply that they can then sell to markets and customers who increasingly need more and higher quality supply of electricity.

The Blueprint Power team includes: Robyn Beavers, co-founder and CEO (formerly of Google, Vestas, NRG and Lennar); Claire Woo, co-founder and head of technology (formerly of Bosch and NRG); Nicholas Squires, co-founder and head of systems integration (formerly of Boeing); Nicholas Schmidt, VP of engineering (formerly of United States Air Force and Boeing); and Savannah Goodman, product manager (formerly of Tesla).

“Until very recently, buildings were not able to proactively sell excess energy capacity in the same way that traditional power plants do,” said Robyn Beavers, CEO, Blueprint Power. “Now in states like New York they can. We are helping buildings connect to and transact in these markets in a scalable way.”

Blueprint Power has developed an innovative platform to help buildings sell their excess electricity into a growing number of competitive energy markets, a previously untouchable opportunity for the real estate community. Blueprint’s machine-learning platform transforms buildings into producers of surplus energy by connecting to and managing onsite assets such as solar, battery storage, co-generation, fuel cells, thermal storage and controllable loads. The company’s marketplace software receives price signals and dynamically matches supply to the best source of revenue, turning buildings into virtual power plants.

An increasing number of buildings in cities nationwide now host onsite energy equipment that can reduce wasteful consumption of electricity. These onsite resources already provide value by reducing utility bills. But they also have the potential to start generating revenue for real-estate owners by selling excess capacity and services to existing and emerging energy consumers. The financial incentive to add a new level of intelligence and control across these distributed energy systems has not existed – until today.

“Congruent is excited to work with Blueprint Power’s outstanding leadership team and investors base to help grow its business,” said Abe Yokell, co-founder and managing partner, Congruent Ventures. “Blueprint is offering a first-of-its-kind opportunity to real estate owners in New York City enabled by a technology and regulatory evolution, uncovering new revenue streams and driving more sustainable energy solutions for society.”

Robyn Beavers, Blueprint founder and CEO