At Peak, we’re always on the lookout for companies with innovative solutions to pressing problems. That’s why we recently announced our recent investment in Enersee, a Belgium-based startup revolutionising energy consumption in real estate and facilities. It’s the future of energy diagnostics.
Accelerating energy optimisations in building and facility management.
Investing in Enersee was a no-brainer for us. The team’s vision to revolutionise energy management for real estate and facilities is not only admirable but also timely. With energy prices fluctuating and the world becoming increasingly conscious of the environmental impact of energy, Enersee is perfectly positioned to take advantage of these tailwinds.
The virtual energy manager software that Enersee developed helps reduce both energy costs and carbon footprint across large retail real estate portfolios or facilities. The platform allows building and facility managers to better monitor performance and consumption through advanced, AI-based energy measurement and verification, accurate consumption forecasting, and real-time anomaly detection.
Deep domain knowledge of the founders.
The founders, Maarten and Joachim, are technical domain experts with extensive experience in energy consulting, data engineering and data analytics. Maarten has been active with the topic for almost 10 years, including his time at VEB, the public Flemish energy company. This tenure gave him access to vast amounts of data on energy consumption, on which he built a first version of Enersee. Joachim is an engineer by trade and has spent roughly 8 years on Data Engineering and Data Analytics projects. Together, they have a deep understanding of the challenges when it comes to energy management and the future of energy diagnostics. They have leveraged their expertise to create a product that truly meets their customers’ needs.
AI-driven insights with very little manual interaction.
Enersee’s competitive advantage lies in its modelling and automatic AI-driven insights into energy consumption. Its energy diagnostics software is plug-and-play, integrating with over 50 existing EMS systems and data platforms, currently detecting 92% of issues that occur, with very limited human interaction. The product is constantly trained on both live and historic datasets. Actually, when building the first product version, Maarten had access to 15 minute interval data of 3,400 buildings for a period of 4 years and consequently gained a head start. While many companies claim to be “AI-driven”, the Enersee team pulled it off.
What’s more impressive is that despite being a small team, Enersee secured customers who represent a portfolio of more than 1,000 buildings. The immediate positive responses from potential customers who we invited to talk to the team during our due diligence was further adding proof of the need for Enersee’s solution.
A colossal & dynamic market.
The market Enersee is in is massive. In Benelux alone, there are over 2 million non-residential buildings, and Europe as a whole is feeling regulatory and stakeholder pressures to improve energy efficiency. Indeed, buildings are a significant contributor to CO2 emissions across the globe.
In France, for example, the building sector accounts for 43% of France’s annual energy consumption and generates 23% of French greenhouse gas emissions. New regulation commits all actors in this sector to reducing carbon emissions by 30 to 40% by 2030. At the same time, investing in and retrofitting existing buildings (by, say, having better energy consumption analytics & diagnostics).
We believe Enersee to be in a prime position to make a difference by piggybacking on a $13bn Energy Management Systems (EMS) market, which is expected to grow 14% CAGR in the next 10 years.
An enterprise model with great financial potential
Enersee perfectly fits the enterprise SaaS sales model: multi-year contracts and high potential for upselling. From a financial perspective, everybody will appreciate that.
The typical customer of Enersee has more than 10 facilities and struggles with managing the consumption of this real estate portfolio. In fact, the software is very helpful as customers tend to have a savings target that they aim to reach by end of year. Thus, Enersee services customers with a few initial buildings and facilities to generate savings very quickly, and the results are the best proof points for a roll-out across the entire portfolio. And the continuous value delivered to customers with the monitoring of Enersee just makes it easy to retain them for a very long time (and retention matters, as we know, for any SaaS business to grow).
One of Enersee’s current customers reduced their energy bill by an impressive €47k in just three months after purchasing Enersee’s virtual energy manager. That’s a return on investment of 63x and you can understand the major impact of a €47k in spoiled energy consumption would have had on the environment!
Overall, we couldn’t be more thrilled to be working with Maarten, Joachim and the broader team at Enersee. Their remarkable early-traction and ability to generate significant savings for their customers is truly inspiring. We can’t wait to see what the future holds for them!