The energy flexibility platform Orus Energy has raised a €2.2 million pre-seed round to help decarbonise the power grid. The company has built a demand-side flexibility platform enabling commercial building operators to automatically shift energy consumption during peak energy periods. The funding round was led by top tier European venture capital firm b2venture and top French impact funds Asterion Ventures and Ring Capital. The round also gathers several angel investors from the industry, including Pierre Trémolières (Accenta.ai) and Myriam Maestroni (e5t).
“Orus Energy’s mission is to enable decarbonised power grids through consumer involvement,” said Alexandre Girard, CEO and co-founder of Orus Energy. “Our approach is unique: by using buildings as thermal batteries at scale, we can help unlock 6 gigawatts of power demand in France alone by 2030.”
“The power grid has become the Achilles’ heel of the energy transition. The rise of intermittent renewable energies on one hand, and the increased electrification of uses with the advent of electric vehicles and heat pumps on the other, are putting more and more pressure on the power grid,” said Fanny Sauvée, Co-founder and COO at Orus Energy. “The grid’s critical role in balancing production and consumption at all times is becoming increasingly challenging.”
In this evolving energy landscape, demand-side flexibility becomes a cornerstone of the transition to a resilient energy system that fully integrates renewables. Modulating the power usage of flexible equipment such as heating, EV charging, and systems based on grid demands directly reduces reliance on polluting peak periods. While demand-side flexibility has proven effective in the industrial sector, generating €1.3 billion in France in 2022, it has reached its limits. Commercial buildings, which account for over a third of peak electricity consumption, offer the greatest potential for scalable flexible power. With this vision of unleashing electricity flexibility potential on a large scale, the founders Théophile Karila, Fanny Sauvée and Alexandre Girard created Orus Energy in 2023.
Orus Energy is revolutionising the way buildings interact with electricity markets. By optimizing the aggregated flexibility of numerous buildings, Orus’ software dynamically adjusts energy usage, shifting it to times when electricity is cheapest and greenest, thus providing valuable flexibility to the electricity grid. Leveraging machine learning, the platform predicts electricity consumption and flexibility needs in buildings. Then, it enables intelligent and dynamic control of the electricity consumption for a range of flexible energy-consuming assets like heat pumps or thermostats. The demand response platform interfaces with control systems deployed at scale, to shift power demand without impacting occupant comfort, thanks to the thermal inertia of buildings, and remunerates clients up to 10% of their electricity bill for doing so.
