Fluence, a leading integrator of large-scale energy storage systems, has acquired grid software startup AMS.
The deal hands an exit to AMS investors, including former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who bought into the startup’s early vision of turning commercial buildings into flexible grid assets. After winning pivotal utility contracts in California, AMS ran up against the capital constraints of managing a multi-year infrastructure buildout as a venture-backed company. In 2017, it pivoted to software to dispatch grid assets more profitably in competitive markets.
That’s the expertise Fluence bought. The joint venture between AES and Siemens already provides software to its battery customers to govern system safety and performance, and to dispatch according to market rules and interconnection constraints. But the AI-backed real-time trading algorithm AMS built will help Fluence customers make more money on their projects, said Fluence CTO Brett Galura.
“Energy storage is really the first truly dispatchable digital asset on the electric grid,” Galura said in an interview Wednesday. “We knew that the best way to continue to add value would be to continue to add more digital capabilities.”
That alignment echoes a partnership from 2019, when integrator NEC Energy Solutions teamed up with AMS competitor Stem to offer wholesale market assistance to storage customers. But those companies did not merge, and NEC ES recently decided to stop pursuing new business.
The goal of these pairings is to make battery plants, and clean energy plants more broadly, more profitable and efficient in power markets, thereby hastening the acceleration of a lower carbon power grid.
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