ENGIE, (formerly GDF SUEZ), announced today it has invested in KiWi Power, a leading UK demand response aggregator, through its corporate venture capital company “ENGIE NewVentures”. This investment will see ENGIE support the privately owned energy technology company’s plans for growth and development of its client base in the UK and internationally.
The potential for synergies between the two companies is large. ENGIE is committed to offer new services in energy management to its large and global client base. KiWi has developed a leading technology and extensive industry expertise within the demand response, energy management and smart grid space.
Demand response is an innovative solution being increasingly relied upon to help System Operators balance demand and supply on national energy infrastructure networks. Commercial electricity consumers such as industrial and manufacturing plants, office buildings and public sector sites like hospitals can use demand response to reduce electricity demand on the network when energy usage is at peak levels. Demand response offers participating organisations a range of benefits including a recurring revenue stream, reduced overall electricity expenditure and improved sustainability credentials. Most importantly it is a cleaner and more efficient method of grid balancing than traditional peaking power stations.
Gérard Mestrallet, CEO of ENGIE said: “ENGIE believes in demand response as an environmentally-friendly and revenue-enhancing service for customers, a way to meet the challenges of the energy transition to a low carbon economy and further integration of renewable sources of generation. KiWi Power’s customer-friendly solution, real time metering, technology and automated processes have a lot to offer to commercial customers in this respect. We want to be able to continue to offer to our customers a wide variety of commercial solutions that work for almost every company under every set of circumstances.”
Yoav Zingher, Co-Founder and CEO of KiWi Power said: “There are many opportunities opening up in the marketplace and our fast growth to date is indicative of our agility and drive to harness technology and innovation to bring new solutions to tackle the challenge of balancing energy demand and supply.”
Ziko Abram, Co-Founder and Chief Commercial Officer of KiWi Power said: “We are very excited to have ENGIE on board. We have been working with ENGIE over the last year to expand our demand response offering across their vast international customer base. We are excited to be strengthening our relationship with a global, forward thinking utility who share our commitment to providing flexible and sustainable solutions to the challenges facing System Operators.”