Electron, a GridTech company and a specialist in energy flexibility marketplaces, has agreed to acquire Rhythmos.io, a pioneer in distributed energy resource (DER) detection and grid impact analytics.
As EVs, battery storage systems and rooftop solar proliferate, utilities need to identify where these resources are located, quantify their grid impact, and deploy them to defer costly infrastructure upgrades.
Electron’s platform, ElectronConnect, is designed to enable utilities and system operators to optimize utilization of distributed energy resources, including EVs and stationary batteries. Electron says it currently works with over half of the UK’s distribution system operators, and is now expanding its operations in the US market.
Rhythmos.io provides data analytics for utilities and EV fleet operators. Its platform is designed to enable utilities to seamlessly integrate EV charging capacity without expensive infrastructure upgrades, while providing granular insights into charging patterns and grid impacts.
The combined company will offer “value orchestration technologies designed to bridge the gap between visibility and deployment.” This will enable utilities to identify and measure the impact of distributed energy resources on specific transformers and substations across their networks.
“DERs have the potential to unlock significant system-wide savings by optimizing both energy use and grid infrastructure, and our experience running flexibility markets internationally shows these benefits are real and scalable,” said Jo-Jo Hubbard, CEO of Electron. “The challenge isn’t on the supply side—virtual power plants have already aggregated gigawatts of flexibility. The challenge lies on the buy side: utilities need better visibility, valuation tools, and market capabilities to build defensible business cases for relying on DERs at scale. With Rhythmos, we’re bridging that gap by bringing grid awareness to flexibility markets, which helps both utilities deploy resources more strategically and DER providers capture more value.”
“For the first time, utilities can see precisely where distributed resources exist and how they affect the grid—right down to the service transformer—using data they already have,” said Ken Munson, CEO of Rhythmos. “By pairing Rhythmos’s grid-edge visibility with Electron’s flexibility marketplace, utilities gain the situational awareness needed to make smarter, data-driven investment decisions. They can now demonstrate, with evidence, when local flexibility is more cost-effective than building new infrastructure.”
Source: Electron
