Next Kraftwerke raises new funding for microgeneration technologies

Funding

Next Kraftwerke GmbH has raised a new round of funding from Neuhaus Partners, Business Angels and the public High-Tech Gründerfonds for the further development of its Virtual Power plant, in which it uses software to integrate and balance the load of electricity coming from microgeneration plants, such as emergency power generators, co-generation units and biogas plants, enabling the electricity they generate to be fed into the main grid.

Working with partners experienced in this market, the company covers the entire spectrum of services from modifying and linking microgeneration plant, through to electricity trading and operations management. Pooling the output of such plants makes unused resources available to the electricity market.

The company is based on research carried out at Cologne University’s Institute of Energy Economics, where the founders developed the idea for setting up a virtual power plant.

“The strong penetration of renewable energy has in recent years sharply increased the flexibility demands on the German electricity market. Next Kraftwerke is the link between microgeneration plant and the electricity market. Microgeneration units can now be employed in a targeted way depending on the electricity market’s demand,” says Jochen Schwill, Technical Director.

“We are pleased to have found committed investors who are convinced by our products,” says Hendrik Sämisch, Next Kraftwerke GmbH’s Commercial Director. “On this financial footing, numerous microgeneration plants can now be used more efficiently by being integrated into our virtual power plant.”