Recurve Analytics Inc., an open-source platform for virtual power plants, said today it has raised $18 million in new funding to accelerate the transition to clean energy by reducing stress on the grid during periods of high demand.

The startup’s Series B round was funded by Calpine Energy Solutions, Quantum Innovation Fund, Toshiba Energy Systems & Solutions and Energy Foundry. It had raised a total of $33 million before this round, including a round in May for $19 million, according to Crunchbase.

Founded in 2015, Recurve’s platform supports virtual power plants through a revenue-grade, open-source platform that enables planning, procurement and demand flexibility. A virtual power plant is a cloud-based distributed power plant that aggregates the capacity of distributed energy resources to enhance power generation and trading or selling power on the electricity market.

Recurve argues that with more than half of the U.S. facing an energy supply crisis this summer, its open-source model assists by connecting customers with resources to reduce and reschedule their electricity use to stabilize the grid. ​The platform acts as a load-balancing resource that taps into solutions such as smart thermostats, heat pumps and managed electric vehicle charging and storage to improve grid reliability.

The company’s mission is to accelerate the transition to a clean energy economy by integrating behind-the-meter demand flexibility resources into the emerging carbon-free energy grid.

“The idea that we can integrate behind-the-meter energy resources such as energy efficiency, demand response, building electrification and EV charging into unified virtual power plants on par with supply-side resources is no longer hypothetical,” Matt Golden, chief executive officer of Recurve, said in a statement. “We are doing it now and the market is accelerating quickly.”

In partnership with MCE, Recurve also offers a marketplace that connects solution providers and aggregators to markets that pay for the grid value of their projects. Launched in June, the FLEXmarket provides market access to new technologies and innovative business models by paying for performance based on how users reshape or reduce load during high-demand periods when the grid is most at risk of an energy shortfall.

Recurve has ambitions to expand its technology further afield, working across the country and internationally to utilize newfound telemetry from recent smart-meter investments. With grid reliability becoming an increasingly global issue, Recurve is tapping into a tangible solution by managing electricity usage to match supply.

Image: Recurve