Voltus, a provider of a virtual power plant (VPP) operator and distributed energy resource (DER) platform, is acquiring Brightfield AI in its effort to deploy cost-effective storage. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

While the commercial and industrial (C&I) sector accounts for 60% of total U.S. electricity consumption, it currently hosts less than 1% of installed battery energy storage system (BESS) capacity, making C&I energy storage a large, untapped opportunity, according to Voltus.

Brightfield is an agentic battery project development company whose platform is designed to reduce the time and cost involved in deploying energy storage, allowing its EPC partners to cost-effectively deploy batteries at scale.

“The combination of Voltus and Brightfield changes the math: We can now deploy cost-effective energy storage at many of our customer sites,” said Dana Guernsey, CEO of Voltus. “Brightfield’s execution expertise and proven industry credibility are precisely what we need to scale storage and provide our customers with another answer to their challenge of higher energy costs.”

The front-end friction of customer acquisition, highly complex site evaluations, and the cost of the battery itself have been the primary obstacles holding back C&I battery development.

“We are actively inviting leading battery manufacturers, financial institutions, and C&I energy users—including hyperscalers looking to unlock Voltus’s Bring Your Own Capacity (BYOC) solutions—to collaborate with us on this next phase of deployment,’’ said Larsh Johnson, cofounder of Brightfield AI. “Voltus already partners with leading EPCs who are experts in physical infrastructure construction. Now, we are offering these vital execution partners access to an incredibly powerful customer acquisition engine and platform that handles all aspects of energy storage deployment in a fraction of the typical time and cost.”

“The combined company can leverage Brightfield’s AI battery modeling and optimization algorithms to rapidly assess portfolio site readiness and automate early-stage development workflows,’’ added Oleksandr Vovk, cofounder of Brightfield AI.

Brightfield’s founding team will take on new roles at Voltus:

• Tim Hade, CEO of Brightfield AI, will join Voltus as senior vice president of its battery division. Larsh Johnson, cofounder and CTO of Voltus, will become chief architect of Voltus.
• Oleksandr Vovk, president of Brightfield AI, will serve as vice president of Battery Energy Storage at Voltus.
• Peter Krasco, COO of Brightfield AI, will serve as vice president of battery operations.