Terralayr
Assembly Line
Former watch trader is now building the AWS of grid storage, Terralayr
Man’s alternative, which has taken shape as a startup called Terralayr, is a twist on the virtual power plant, what experts call it when energy traders aggregate batteries and manage their use. He said Terralayr, which he also co-founded with Wurlitzer, is similar to AWS, Amazon’s cloud service that aggregates computing resources and sells fractions of them. “We aggregate grid-scale energy storage assets, we bundle them, we virtualize them, and then we sell off the capacity between 15 minutes and 15 years,” Man said.
AWS transformed enterprise computing, allowing companies to run servers without owning hardware and quickly scale them as needed. In some ways, virtual power plants do the same. Owners of grid-scale batteries can sell their capacity to traders, who then aggregate that capacity to the point where it makes sense to play in large electricity markets.
Terralayr also manages batteries, both its own and those of others, but Man said the difference is that it doesn’t function as a trader, but something more like an exchange. “Our pitch is like, we’re not traders. We don’t trade at all. In fact, we will just find the best buyer for your capacity.”
The startup charges battery owners a “small percentage” fee based on revenues. If Terralayr can operate the battery more profitably than a competitor, it will also take a portion of the upside. (How is that determined? Man said the company uses a model, built in part using previous bids from its own customers, that predicts what a typical trader would do.)
To fund the expansion, Terralayr has raised €62 million in equity and €15 million in debt from investors, including Creandum, Earlybird, Norrsken VC, Picus Capital, and Rive Private Investment. “I wouldn’t call it seed round, but that’s technically what it is,” Man said, adding that “seed would wrongly suggest the earliness of the business.”