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The Tiny Box Behind Every Solar Panel Is Enphase's Big Bet
Enphase turned the least glamorous part of rooftop solar into a platform. Now its panel-level microinverters anchor a connected system for making, storing, using, and selling household power.
NRG Wants to Run the Power Plant - and Your Thermostat
NRG spent years becoming a retailer you might meet on an electricity bill. Now it is joining power plants, smart homes and flexible demand into one system - a bet that the winner in the next energy cycle will understand both sides of the meter.
SwitchDin
SwitchDin is a Newcastle, Australia-based energy technology company that builds software and edge hardware to make distributed energy resources (DER) - rooftop solar, home and grid batteries, EV chargers and controllable loads - visible, controllable and orchestrable at scale. Its Stormcloud cloud platform and Droplet edge controllers create a common, vendor-neutral language across different brands of inverters and batteries, letting utilities, retailers and network operators run microgrids, virtual power plants and flexible-export programs. Founded in 2014 by Dr Andrew Mears, the company works with major Australian utilities including Horizon Power, Ausgrid, AGL, Origin and Western Power, and helped deliver a world-first renewable-only microgrid run in Onslow, WA.
Texture
Texture is a New York-based climate-tech company building the operating system for the energy grid. Its AI-native software platform connects to any meter, device, or data source - solar arrays, batteries, EVs, AMI and SCADA feeds - and gives electric utilities, cooperatives, virtual power plant operators, and grid-services companies a single place to enroll devices, monitor the distribution system in real time, run demand-response and flexibility programs, and measure performance. Founded in 2023 by Sanjiv Sanghavi (co-founder of ClassPass), Texture aims to break the manufacturer 'walled gardens' that keep distributed energy resources from working together.