Open Access Energy (OAE), a South African start up using AI to enable digital infrastructure for electricity trading, has closed a $1.8 million seed funding round with participation from E3 Capital, Equator VC, and Factor E Ventures. The round will accelerate product development and customer growth as the company scales to meet rising demand for flexible, decentralised energy infrastructure.
OAE’s flagship product, EnergyPro, is a cloud-based software platform that enables energy wheeling - the process of delivering electricity from decentralised renewable producers to distributed consumers via existing transmission infrastructure. OAE’s platform automates the backend processes including metering, risk management, and forecasting – ensuring that energy generation and consumption loads are efficiently matched in real time.
Andrew Darge, E3 Capital’s lead on the transaction, said, “Open Access Energy has built a software-led solution for a real-world problem - enabling renewables to flow through existing infrastructure. The opportunity for digital technology to support municipal wheeling, embedded generation, and transparent settlement at scale is exactly what Africa’s power sector needs to drive the transition to lower carbon economies.”
OAE was founded in 2021 as South Africa accelerated its transition away from coal dependency. The country’s power grid struggles with reliability issues, and its energy production relies on an aging stock of coal-fired plants. However, as distributed renewable energy production continues to grow it cannot efficiently be matched with consumer demand, leading to an excess of clean energy, despite unmet consumer needs for power.
Gerjo Hoffman, CEO of Open Access Energy said: “Private generation is central to South Africa’s energy transition. This funding allows us to scale the tools that Independent Power Producers and Energy Traders need to participate in and benefit from the liberalised energy market. We’re proud to have the support of leading investors who understand the opportunity and are committed to building long-term impact,”