DER platform enabling a flexible grid
Voltus works with commercial and industrial customers, as well as distributed energy resource (DER) aggregators, to generate significant savings by shifting energy consumption during times of stress on the grid. The company uses simple, cost and risk-free programs to enable owners of DERs to monetize assets through wholesale energy markets. The Voltus platform empowers the shift towards cleaner distributed energy resources while modernizing the grid to be more flexible and resilient.
The energy transition depends on a technology platform to enroll and orchestrate distributed energy resources across real time energy, capacity, and demand response markets, as DERs enable global electricity grids to decentralize, decarbonize, and digitize, while delivering less expensive, more reliable, and cleaner power. As DER deployments accelerate in the coming years, asset owners and aggregators will seek access to wholesale power markets in order to unlock grid flexibility and better economics, and Voltus is the leading software technology platform monetizing these distributed assets.
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Raj Atluru
Managing Partner
Raj has been investing at the intersection of technology and energy, transportation and industrial systems for 25 years and has had the honor of working with many of the early pioneers in these markets. Raj has founded three private investment firms focused on sustainability over the previous three decades.
Prior to co-founding Activate, Raj was a Founder of Silver Lake Kraftwerk, a private equity fund focused on the energy and resource sectors. From 2000 to 2011, Raj was a Managing Director at Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ), where he founded the firm’s cleantech and India investment practices. DFJ was an early investor in companies that created entirely new markets with visionary founders – Baidu, Skype, Tesla, SpaceX, Solar City, EnerNOC, Box, Athena Healthcare, Redfin and Ping Identity. In 2005, Raj co-founded DFJ Element with Activate co-founder David Lincoln – the leading dedicated cleantech firm of its vintage. Raj has served on over 25 public, private and nonprofit boards including SolarCity (SCTY), Ping Identity (PING), EnerNOC (ENOC), Parnassus Funds and current investments Generate Capital, Voltus, Flexe, Altana AI, Nozomi, Swimlane, Ridecell and Omnidian.
Raj holds BS and MS degrees in Environmental Engineering and an MBA from Stanford University, where he began his lifelong passion for renewable energy systems. He was previously a Sandia National Labs research associate, an Aspen Fellow, and founder of an educational non profit, The Spotlight Foundation. In his free time, Raj enjoys skiing the steeps, hiking and cooking for his family in San Francisco.
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Eric Meyer
Principal
Eric is a Principal at Activate, where he focuses on deal sourcing, due diligence, execution and supporting portfolio companies post-investment. He is a Board Observer at portfolio companies Voltus, Omnidian, PosiGen, Fictiv, Parsable and Element Analytics.
Prior to joining Activate, Eric was an Associate at ValueAct Capital, an activist hedge fund, where he covered investment ideas spanning several sectors including energy and industrials. Eric began his career as a business analyst at McKinsey & Company in their Silicon Valley office.
Eric holds a degree in Chemistry from Yale University and an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania where he graduated as a Palmer Scholar. In his free time, Eric enjoys the combination of fresh air and healthy middle-aged competition by playing soccer and golfing during the summer and skiing in the winter.
Highlights
of capacity in portfolio - helping to avoid use of peaker power plants across 9 Independent System Operators (ISOs)
in savings to customers to date
