If you’re an electricity nerd, you’ve probably already spent a few hours watching Electricity Maps and its fascinating export flow animations. This open source data visualization project has been around since 2016. But companies like Google and Samsung are increasingly relying on this rich data set to achieve their sustainability goals and empower their own users.
There are currently 20 employees working for Electricity Maps and the company has been profitable for several years. But TechCrunch has exclusively learned that it recently closed a $5.4 million (€5 million) funding round from Transition and Revent to take things a step further by investing in the product and the company. Electricity Maps is now both a data visualization tool and an enterprise API for data-driven decarbonization – and one wouldn’t work without the other.
Founded by Olivier Corradi, a French and Danish entrepreneur and data scientist who previously worked for voice assistant startup Snips, Electricity Maps began with a desire to learn more about electricity production and consumption. “There were articles in the press that said Denmark ran on 100% renewable energy for a day. So I was wondering if that was true and how long it lasted – how many hours a day,” Corradi told TechCrunch.
Photo credit: Power cards
Electricity Maps collects real-time data on electricity production in more than 50 countries around the world. While the company leverages open data sources, employees and community contributors have had to create dozens of parsers to standardize this data.
Because renewable energy is dependent on weather conditions (particularly wind and solar energy), the mix of energy sources is constantly evolving. This means that the carbon intensity of the energy produced also changes with the time of day and current conditions. And as you may have guessed, because electricity works similarly to tap water flowing through a vast network of pipes, the CO2 emissions associated with the electricity you use can vary greatly.
Calculating carbon emissions can be complicated because there are also many cross-border electricity flows – some countries produce more electricity than they actually use, while others have electricity needs greater than their production capacity. Electricity Maps has developed its own flow tracking model to understand which power plant is contributing to the electricity you are currently consuming.
“We will process all of this in our system using something called a flow tracing algorithm, which will allow us to tell you where the power is coming from depending on where you are. It can be produced locally, but it can also come from Germany. But Germany imports from Poland, so it could possibly come from Poland etc. So we need to do some modeling,” Corradi said.
The company also stores historical data and uses machine learning algorithms to provide 24-hour forecasts. Just as weather APIs are a big industry today, power forecasting APIs could become essential business tools in the future.
Olivier Corradi, Founder and CEO of Electricity Maps (Photo credit: power cards)
From carbon intensity to load shifting
The reason why the open source data visualization project is an integral part of the company is because Electricity Maps wants to achieve as much consensus as possible. Calculating lifecycle emissions for electricity generation requires peer-reviewed studies.
The company reports all of its sources for emission factors. This also means that these calculation methods may evolve over time as researchers publish new studies with more precise results. The community can discuss and submit possible changes that will be reflected in the Electricity Maps data.
As for the commercial part, knowing the carbon intensity of the electricity available at a particular place and time can be a kind of superpower.
“With all the renewable energy installation targets, we will find ourselves in a world where the amount of intermittent renewable energy will triple by 2030,” Corradi said.
“The good thing is that this demand is flexible because there will be electric cars and you can change the charging time. It will be AI training and you can choose the time when you want to train these large models,” he added.
Photo credit: Power cards
Google, one of Electricity Maps’ key customers, worked with the European startup to calculate the carbon intensity of the electricity powering its data centers.
For some tasks, such as indexing the web or training a new AI model, Google can use Electricity Maps data to shift load. When there is more wind, it’s time to spin up additional servers. Or when it’s nighttime in the US, Google can move some compute-intensive operations to European data centers.
But Google’s own customers will also benefit from the company’s partnership with Electricity Maps. With the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, many companies will soon have to publish carbon accounting reports. Because many companies rely on Google Cloud for their hosting needs, they need data to calculate their Scope 3 emissions. Thanks to Electricity Maps’ historical data, this carbon data will be more accurate.
Samsung, another Electricity Maps customer, uses the startup’s data to show users the power consumption and carbon footprint of their Samsung devices. In this case, it’s more about educating users.
But Electricity Maps is much more than just a teaching tool. It can act as a layer of information that decides whether it’s a good time to turn on millions of electrical devices – or at least whether it’s a good time to have as little impact on the planet as possible.
Why does a profitable company rise? According to Corradi, the cash injection aims to increase Electricity Maps’ own impact by stepping on the gas so that the company can meet the increasing demand for smarter climate tools. “The reason we raised is simply that the amount of renewable energy that is now in the system is becoming so large that you start to take advantage of the flexibility of the devices that you have at home or in the industrial sector. ”