Electronx is building a stock market for electricity trade

Renewable electricity is cheap and clean, but also less predictable than lighting a gas turbine. It turns out that it is a problem and an opportunity.

Most of the solutions to the problem of intermittency involve combining solar panels and wind turbines with batteries, which store the power to use when the sun sets or the wind goes out. The batteries act as a kind of coverage against these natural interruptions.

But expensive physical assets are not the only way to cover the risk. The markets are another. A startup, ElectronxIt is in the process of building an exchange in which buyers and vendors can exchange electricity. The objective, the company said is to help both parties to administer the risk and volatility of coverage, eliminating part of the financial uncertainty of renewable energy.

To achieve that goal, Electronx has raised $ 10 million in a monitoring round led by Systemiq Capital with the participation of Equinor Ventures, Shell Ventures and innovation efforts, the company told TechCrunch. The new investment follows a $ 15 million seed that the startup collected in June 2024.

For the most part, the electricity market in the United States is highly regulated, based on assumptions that were formed when electricity was largely generated by coal power plants. They ran day after day, forming a stable base in which the most expensive power plants reacted to demand fluctuations.

But as Solar and Wind have entered the market, they have turned some of those assumptions into their heads. Unlike the large fossil fuel energy plants, renewable energy can be turned on and off quickly. The batteries are added to cost, but offer even more speed and flexibility to respond to changes in demand.

These qualities have opened the door to new forms of commercial energy, Electronx argues.

The exchange proposed by the company would allow suppliers and consumers to buy and sell capacity in blockages of 1 megawatts per hour or per hour for the current day and the next day. Electronx is still waiting for the approval of the Basic Products Future Trade Commission, but if that happens, the company's most granular blocks could reduce the “implicit multimillionaire negotiation requirement” present in current electricity markets, said the company.

The objective is to allow smaller companies to play a more important role in electricity markets, similar to the way in which retail merchants can participate in the stock market. “By taking advantage of more precise financial products, renewable assets should see better return profiles and faster recovery periods,” the company said in a statement.