Hybrid Greentech: optimising energy storage assets

“About 20 years ago, I watched a documentary about hydrogen fuel cell busses in Iceland and knew immediately that I wanted to work on alternative forms of energy for the rest of my life,” says Rasmus Rode Mosbæk, founder and CEO of Hybrid Greentech, based just outside Copenhagen. Rasmus and his company have since specialised on energy storage: “We offer both the expert advice, like a consultancy, and a virtual power plant facility.”

With the ambition of increasing the penetration of (often unreliable and unstable) renewables in the electricity grid, and the phasing out of (more reliable) fossil fuels, there comes a need to make sure that the energy grid remains balanced and stable. That’s where Hybrid Greentech comes in, offering an energy trading system and a virtual power plant based on their customers’ stationary battery units complete with a data-driven AI software ecosystem that allows for a constant balancing of the grid and an optimisation of energy supply and demand. “We aggregate all the batteries we have under management into energy trading, to ensure operating profit and to stabilise the grid. We also try to optimise the lifetime of the interconnected batteries in the portfolio.”

“We can help our customers like electric charge points operators and other large energy users assess their needs, and through our virtual power plants, we can help them reduce payback time by ten years, increase operating profit by 40% per year, and decrease battery degradation by 61%,” Rasmus explains, underlining the business case that is so critical in order for sustainability proposals to materialise.

Rasmus was helped along the way by a loan from EIFO, guaranteed by the EIF through the InvestEU programme. This financing allowed the company to work on product development and scale the business, expanding to northern European markets. “We’re active now in Denmark, going live in Sweden in 2024, and then Finland and Norway,” he adds. But the company started small, very small: “I could see that stationary battery sources would increase by 1000x, but I needed to convince people. I was a one-man army for one and a half years to begin with and raised public funding to hire the first employee.”

Times have changed, demand is growing, and the company is well-positioned today. “As we move more towards renewables, there will be a greater need for stability services. The technologies are there, hardware prices have been dropping for the last 15 years, and AI can really help us control the grid and its flexibility closely. I think we can be optimistic if we make the right decisions now.”