Driving the EV Revolution: Fermata Energy
Excerpt below from Public Utilities Fortnightly - June 2023
Driving the EV Revolution: Fermata Energy
One of Fermata Energy's active V2X sites in Virginia.
An excerpt of Q&A with CEO David Slutzky and Public Utilities Fortnightly
. . . David Slutzky: We built our software platform to recognize if you're aggregating different power electronic systems with varied communication protocols and to have them function as a single unit as part of a virtual power plant or distributed energy resource.
Members of our team had built the original software platform for Duke Energy's microgrid. We've added to that team data science expertise because we have to predict behaviors of different elements.
The weather is impacting HVAC systems, which impacts load and affects battery degradation. It's a lot of variables, and that's why we developed an advanced software platform.
It took years to get the tech right, and we couldn't get anybody to make the bidirectional chargers, so we made them ourselves. We got the first UL 9741 certified bidirectional charger, right before COVID hit.
We're still the only company with this certification because it's not easy to obtain. But we decided we don't want to only be in the charger business as that will become a commodity business. AI-driven software matters.
We're partnering with most of the major charger OEMs around the world, including startups. As they pivot to make bidirectional chargers, we're helping them get through UL. We leverage their products with our software platform. . .