Overview
Founded in 2024, Powernaut builds software that aggregates distributed energy assets, such as batteries, solar installations, and flexible loads, into a coordinated Virtual Power Plant. This enables grid operators and energy traders to treat dispersed assets as a single dispatchable resource.
The EUR 2.4M raise, completed in 2024, funds the platform's development and initial market entry. Virtual Power Plant technology is gaining traction across Europe as grids absorb more intermittent renewables and flexibility becomes a tradable commodity.
Powernaut operates from Ghent and is part of the growing Belgian cleantech and energy technology cluster.
Funding history
- Round: EUR 2.4M (2024)
Key people
In the news
- Happening today at 16:00 CET. Marlon, the researcher who found the Sungrow flaw, joins the Powernaut Weekly to share what he discovered. Still enough room to register.
- Our Friday team meeting has a guest list this week. You’re on it 🎟️ Earlier this month, a 9.2/10 vulnerability was found in Sungrow’s cloud platform. Most cloud breaches end with leaked data or passwords sold on forums. This one reached the hardware, putting roughly 18GW of solar capacity within reach of disruption. That’s more than all the solar installed in Belgium, and roughly 6x the sudden power loss the European grid is built to withstand. So we invited Marlon Starkloff, the researcher who found the flaw, to our Powernaut
- From AI Act to AI Advantage: what we brought to the FEBEG AI event. The AI Act's high-risk obligations are slipping to somewhere between December 2027 and August 2028. For energy companies, that is not a reason to wait. On 16 October, we co-organised FEBEG's event on AI in the energy sector, bringing together Belgium's electricity and gas companies. Our Principal Consultant Francesco Cilurzo opened with a twist on Hemingway: is the best way to find out if you can trust an AI simply to trust it? In energy, the stakes behind that
- Piloting #flexibility is one thing. Scaling it is another level. A typical pilot follows six steps. Select, contract, connect, activate, dispatch, report. And as usual, this is not very net-positive due to the overhead coming with it. That’s why we're coining it #FlexOps. FlexOps is the operational discipline of running flexibility as a continuous practice rather than a project, by closing the loop between asset operations, market operations and business operations on shared data. That’s the difference between a pilot and a P&L.
- A 23 year old in Kassel logged into Sungrow’s cloud with admin rights this summer and realised the password field was simply ignored. Marlon immediately knew he stumbled onto quite the issue. What we only realise now is that this vulnerability would get the same 9.2/10 rating as the PHP flaws that have half the internet patching servers this week. Why? Behind that login, Marlon had access to 470,000 European solar installations, equivalent to 18GW of peak capacity (!!) To put that into perspective: 👉 That’s more solar than
- Elke maand delen we de resultaten van een #LUKA Energy Management System. Deze woning beschikt over 12 kWp zonnepanelen, een geothermische alpha innotec-warmtepomp en een Huawei Luna thuisbatterij van 21 kWh. De zonnepanelen produceerden in de onderzochte periode 9.726 kWh en de warmtepomp verbruikte 1.500 kWh.Zonder LUKA bedroeg de energiefactuur € 590. Met LUKA daalde deze naar € 156. Dat betekent een besparing van € 434 per jaar, oftewel een 74% lagere factuur na aftrek van het LUKA-abonnement. Om de energiefactuur nog verder te
- 𝗝𝗢𝗕𝗦, 𝗝𝗢𝗕𝗦, 𝗝𝗢𝗕𝗦 at Wintercircus Ghent Startup Campus! Payroll or management company? 🥱 Our startups are just looking for positive ass-kickers. 🤷♂️ From AI agents and clean energy to next-gen mobility, sustainability and deep tech: 🌱 🤖 Karomia – 𝗔𝗜 𝗘𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗿, 𝗙𝗿𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗻𝗱 𝗗𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗹𝗼𝗽𝗲𝗿 & 𝗔𝗰𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗻𝘁 𝗘𝘅𝗲𝗰𝘂𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 Making sustainability reporting less painful with cutting edge tech. Less paperwork, more impact. 🤝 Wintro – 𝗔𝗰𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗻𝘁 𝗘𝘅𝗲𝗰𝘂𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲, 𝗦𝗗𝗥 & 𝗠𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴
- Let's get it 🇫🇷 Powernaut just landed in France. Florentijn and Simon are running our stand at Solar & Storage Live Paris and judging by the rehearsals they won't be keeping it quiet. Find them at pod S57 from Oct 14 - 15.
Backers
Pitchdrive
Pitchdrive is a venture capital fund that invests in pre-seed and seed stage startups, with four funds raised totaling €250K-2M in first-check investments, and a portfolio of over 70 companies backed globally.
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