Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) company Nuvve grew its MW under management by 10% in quarter two 2022 and is eying applications for school buses and the marine sector.
The San Diego-headquartered company provides an energy management system (EMS) platform and bidirectional charging infrastructure to allow electric vehicles (EVs) to provide power to the grid. Its EMS aggregate fleets of vehicles into virtual power plants (VPPs) which can then provide power and ancillary services in the same way as a utility-scale battery energy storage system (BESS).
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The company has released its latest financial results amidst a host of partnerships to rollout its tech, which holds huge potential considering the size of the EV market, across multiple sectors and geographies.
Financial results see net loss balloon for Nuvve
Revenue for the three months to June 30 stood at US$1.3 million, a 32.6% increase year-on-year. The bulk of this, US$1.12 million, was products and services revenue: the sale of its bidirectional charging infrastructure contributing US$1 million, grid services contributing US$50,000 and engineering services revenue coming in at US$30,000.
However, net loss grew from US$6.2 million in Q2 2021 to US$47.2 million in Q2 2022, a 760% increase. Selling, general and administrative expenses totalled US$8.1 million, research and development expenses were US$2.2 million while US$43.5 million in costs was attributed to ‘other income (expense)’.
The latter comprises interest expense, impairment of deferred finance costs, change in fair value of private warrants liability and derivative liability. Some of this may be related to a stock market listing in March 2021 through a business combination with Newborn Acquisition Corp, a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC).
Operational highlights and new partnerships
Its MW under management reached 16.1MW by the end of Q2, a 10% increase quarter-on-quarter, and it announced several new partnerships.
One of those is a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Maine Maritime Academy to create a framework of V2G clean-energy solutions across various maritime applications. The work will be carried out at a new ‘Center for Maritime V2G’ at the Academy’s headquarters.
Nuvve COO Ted Smith said the Center would serve to demonstrate the application of Nuvve’s V2G technology in maritime use cases at ports, islands and waterways.
“Integrating Nuvve’s patented V2G technology into maritime infrastructure enables electrified transportation – including marine vessels – to become valuable grid resources,” he said.
The company has also partnered with energy company Vistra to help school districts modernise bus fleets by easing their access to available grant funding. The two have already helped districts apply for more than US$4.5 million in grant funding to replace diesel-powered buses with electric school buses (ESBs).
The ESBs would then hold significant potential as V2G assets as Gregory Poilasne, CEO of Nuvve, explained: “With large batteries on-board and predictable operation times, ESBs are a perfect use-case for vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology, especially in those markets where energy costs have shown significant volatility.”
Alongside the bidirectional charging and EMS platform making this possible, Nuvve’s technology also allows districts to ensure their buses have enough energy to complete daily routes through its smart fleet-management tools. The tool helps monitor battery levels and intelligently schedule bus operation times.
Vistra is known in the energy storage sector for being the project owner of the 400MW/1,600MWh Moss Landing Energy Storage Facility in California, the largest BESS in the world, and it expects to have 1,213MW of operational storage by 2026.
Nuvve’s existing partnerships
The deal with Vistra is similar to one the company struck with Californian utility SDG&E last month. The cooperation will see ESBs equipped with V2G charging infrastructure through Nuvve’s platform to provide energy to the grid during emergency load reduction events.
The Emergency Load Reduction Program (ELRP) was kickstarted by the California Public Utilities Commission in October 2021 to allow electricity users to reduce usage to help avoid grid outages during peak summer season.
In April, Nuvve gained the right to provide ancillary services in Japan using its platform while the month before it, along with a host of other groups in the space, signed an MOU with the US Department of Energy to accelerate the commercialisation of V2G technologies.
And in March, it partnered with Swell Energy which also has a VPP network but uses distributed energy resources (DERs) like rooftop solar PV and home energy storage. The pair are investigating how EVs and associated infrastructure and hardware can participate in Swell’s VPP network.
Nuvve is listed on the Nasdaq and has a market capitalisation of US$80.6 million at the time of writing.
