Haven Energy – a climate tech company that is accelerating the adoption of home battery systems – launched with $4.2 million in seed round funding. This funding round was led by Lerer Hippeau and Giant Ventures, with participation from Quantum Innovation Fund and Raven One Ventures. And Haven Energy will use the new funding round to launch its operations in Southern California where extreme weather and an aging grid have caused over 24,000 power outages in the past 2 years alone. The company plans to expand throughout the state and to additional US markets, targeting 100,000 installations by 2028.
Haven Energy was co-founded by a team of Casper and Uber executives, including Vinnie Campo, Jeff Chapin, and Philip Krim. And the company guides homeowners through the selection, electrical design, permitting, quoting, and financing of a home battery system, and pairs homeowners with vetted, qualified electricians to complete the installation in a matter of weeks.
The company’s home battery systems can be paired with previously installed solar panels or draw directly from the grid to provide backup power in case of emergencies. And a 10 kWh battery can power the basic operations of a house for at least 24 hours.
Software that is maintained by the company will automatically switch a home to draw from its stored energy reserves during an outage and reduce electricity bills by $500-$1,000 per year through optimized time-of-use (TOU) programming. And where allowed by local regulations, homeowners may also be able to monetize their stored energy by selling it back to local utility companies.
Historically a costly investment, the newly enacted Inflation Reduction Act establishes federal subsidies for residential energy storage, thus providing homeowners with a 30% tax credit for standalone home battery systems for the first time. And the subsidies will be critically important to reducing energy inequities and helping low-income homeowners as well as households reliant on fossil fuels to participate in the once-in-a-generation transformation of the national energy grid. Home battery systems are going to help utility companies and Independent System Operators partner with homeowners to establish clean energy sources, respond to peak usage periods with less reliance on gas-powered peaker plants, and smooth out energy usage curves to improve stability.
Plus Haven Energy is also helping households enroll in the company’s virtual power plant, which gives homeowners a way to get compensated during peak hours of energy demand. And by utilizing a software-driven marketplace, Haven Energy will aggregate the supply, demand, and operations of home battery systems. This will continue to bring down the cost of battery ownership, facilitate a fully renewable energy grid, and accelerate the country’s clean energy adoption. The distributed energy market is expected to be valued at $580 billion by 2027.
KEY QUOTES:
“Home battery prices have decreased substantially in the past ten years, and for the first time, homeowners can earn a federal tax credit to help significantly lower the cost of installation. We’re creating a turnkey home battery system experience by offering homeowners speed, simplicity, and a way to generate additional revenue, all while providing backup power to their homes.”
— Haven Energy co-founder and CEO Vinnie Campo, previously a General Manager at Uber
“I spent the better part of a year researching and making energy efficiency and electrification upgrades to protect my family from outages and lower our carbon footprint, but the process of figuring out what I should do and what products to buy was so complex. With Haven Energy, we’re taking the frustration and guesswork out of home battery systems and making them more accessible at a time when power outages and energy costs are at an all time high.”
— Haven Energy co-founder and CPO Jeff Chapin, previously the co-founder and CPO at Casper
“The founding team at Haven Energy has a strong background in solving consumer pain points and a track record of scaling products quickly. We’re firm believers in the team’s mission to build the largest home battery storage marketplace and become the leading operator of residential distributed energy resources.”
— Lerer Hippeau Managing Partner Ben Lerer
“Increasingly, the brightest, most ambitious founders are choosing to focus on climate. Decarbonizing the economy is the most important challenge and biggest economic opportunity for entrepreneurs this century.”
— Giant Ventures co-founder Tommy Stadlen
