The power of the crowd: Evergen to top up $7 million raise

Energy disrupter Evergen, one of Australia’s fastest growing renewable energy systems and software providers, is on track to close a $7 million funding round, which includes an allotment raised through leading equity crowdfunding platform VentureCrowd, commitments from Artesian and AMP Capital. Since the Series A raise commenced in October 2019, Evergen has raised just over $6 million – an inspiring achievement particularly at a time of widespread environmental and market challenges.

With an unprecedented bushfire season and subsequent storms and flooding around the country, there has been an intense focus on climate change. Whilst it has been catastrophic, people are championing for change and this has been a catalyst for signs of action from the government, as well as the commercial sector. In light of this, Evergen, with its distribution partners and network operators has been working on a range of network-led initiatives including deployment of standalone power systems and solar and batteries across bushfire ravaged communities to help restore power, as well as using batteries to offset grid stability in more central locations.

Landmark deals with 8 Star Energy to be the default provider of optimisation for Energizer home batteries in 56 countries, as well as partnering with Solar Service Group, Australia’s largest distributor of home batteries, to be the virtual power plant (VPP) operator / orchestrator for a fleet of ~10,000 batteries, have allowed Evergen to accelerate its strategy to facilitate others to sell and install hardware in both residential and commercial markets, both locally and overseas, and position Evergen to transition to an energy Software As A Service (SaaS) business during 2020.

Evergen is enabling distributed energy with a new channel strategy that ensures it will be a significant force in the evolution of energy systems in Australia and around the world. By accelerating its scaling through other parties, Evergen will effectively fast-track its transition to being primarily a business that generates revenue from software.

Ben Hutt, CEO and Managing Director of Evergen, said, “Our mission is to control and orchestrate enough distributed storage in 10 different markets that we can effectively replace the capacity of a coal-fired power station in each market by 2023. We have executed on significant commercial deals with Energizer via 8 Star Energy as well as Solar Service Group that will transform Evergen to a globally scalable software platform that enables long term annuity stream revenues, and our forecast for recurring SaaS revenues is expected to be in excess of ~$20 million by the end of 2024.

“From an investor point of view, the multiple on which our valuation will be driven becomes a function of annual recurring revenue rather than a function of profit. As our transition to these new revenue streams and business model occurs, the valuation we expect to achieve in the future will increase significantly from where we have priced the current raise. We have adapted and updated the plan and the model to reflect the opportunities we have in front of us. We have a highly capable leadership and extended team, and our goals and strategy are bold but in line with what we believe to be achievable.  We are really leading the charge with these initiatives and I am really excited about where we have got to and are going – the future is extremely bright.”

As international energy markets evolve, battery storage technologies and the software that enables and controls them will become integral in the energy landscape of the future. Evergen has always envisioned the business as a significant force in this transition to renewables both in Australia and internationally by being the software that connects these distributed assets for the benefit of the system and communities as a whole. Delivering software that helps make lives easier for all parties, in turn, will take batteries and battery storage to be a mass market product at scale – and strategically, this is a really important piece of the energy network of the future.

“This is a transformation that is relevant for humanity, so whilst Evergen is a commercial enterprise, the fact that we are actually doing good for the world and undergoing this transition, motivates our amazing team and myself to tackle these bold goals… and I feel like we are well on our way to replacing the 10 coal-fired power stations over the next few years. It is going to be challenging but there will always be challenges along the way when you want to achieve big things. We are all excited and we are here because of the strong interest and support from the local and international investor community,” continued Mr Hutt.

Evergen is at the forefront of the green economy with the country’s most advanced smart solar and battery systems and software. Evergen’s intelligent energy management system increases the performance of single dwelling solar and battery systems and enables operation of virtual power plants (VPP) and microgrids, where fleets of systems are orchestrated and optimised together with the energy networks. Its technology delivers significant savings to customers (on average up to 80 per cent of electricity costs) and it is contracted in several network operator initiatives to test the impact that batteries at both a residential and commercial scale can have on distributed energy networks through VPPs, Microgrids, Demand Response and other initiatives.