Moving Along on the EV Grid

Nuvve Holding Corp. (NASDAQ: NVVE), a green energy tech company that provides vehicle-to-grid (V2G) software technology and has a Grid Integrated Vehicle platform (GIVe) that uses electric vehicles (EVs) to store and resell energy to the electric grid, continues to charge up the field.

Founded in 2010 and headquartered at Liberty Station, Nuvve brought in nearly $5.4 million in 2022, and is growing steadily, much of which is because of the increasing interest in EVs.

The California New Car Dealers Association reported last month that EVs accounted for more than 21% of cars sold in California. That number has more than doubled over the past two years. Nuvve CEO Gregory Poilasne said he expects 30 million EVs in California by 2030. Starting in 2035, all new cars and passenger trucks sold in California are required to be zero-emissions.

Stock Offering

Nuvve on Oct. 20 reported that it closed an underwritten public offering of 7,142,857 shares of common stock at a price to the public of $0.14 per share.

At that same time, Nuvve also granted underwriter Aegis Capital Corp., a 45-day option to purchase up to an additional 1,071,428 shares of common stock at the public offering price per share, less the underwriting discounts and expenses, to cover over-allotments. Aegis chose to partially exercise the option on Oct. 20 by acquiring 797,243 shares.

Gross proceeds for the offering were nearly $1.1 million, before deducting underwriting discounts and other offering expenses.

The company is expecting to use the net proceeds from the offering for working capital and other general corporate purposes.

“Post this capital raise, we only have 45 million shares outstanding which is really tiny compared to other public companies,” said Nuvve President and COO Ted Smith. “We don’t have a very big float and are still very much in that microcap or nanocap realm with a really good risk-reward profile from an investor standpoint.

“This gives us the capital to execute on this stage of our business plan so that we can scale and ultimately become profitable in the intermediate term. We’ve always had a capital raising plan, and we’ve been executing on this plan. We know what we need in terms of resources to execute on our business plan so the use of the funds is operational.”

Nuvve is in a mode where its scaling by increasing its megawatts under management and also in customer growth, but it also has reported some challenges beyond its control.

Fleet electrification has been hampered by supply chain issues that arose in 2021 and continued in 2022 and into this year. Fleet owners typically have had to wait months between making their initial purchase and having their electric vehicles and all of the necessary infrastructure in place and ready for connection.

In October, however, Nuvve reported that it achieved a record number of 38 AC and DC bidirectional charging station connections for school buses and said that the increased growth rate in Nuvve’s charging station connections signals the beginning stages of potentially exponential growth and improvement in fleet owner readiness for their electrification plans.

Diesel Buses on the Way Out

Poilasne said Nuvve continues to ramp up its footprint with the EV school bus industry, as districts look to replace their diesel-fueled fleets. Earlier this year the company started a separate business called Nuvve K-12 to help push out plans for electrifying transportation services for school districts.

Nuvve’s GIVe platform generates recurring V2G revenue and reduces charging costs through intelligent managed charging. Those services end up helping lower the cost of operating school bus fleets.

The company says it has worked with nearly 70 school districts and facilitated the installation of nearly 350 charging stations already.

School fleets will continue to be a top focus in the U.S. market for Nuvve due to the EPA funding and the need to clear the air of pollutants. Poilasne said opportunity for Nuvve to grow in the education transportation market is “gigantic.”

“We think that by 2030, we could have a 25% market share of $6- or $7-billion-dollar market with hardware, software, equipment, grid services,” he said. “There are 500,000 buses transporting 20 million kids in the U.S.”

He said that in addition to clean transportation for kids, “buses that are parked most of the summer could be used to keep the lights” on via Nuvve’s ability to send back energy to the grid.

“That’s exciting for us to solve,” he said.

In early October, Nuvve received a proposed award of $1.9 million by the California Energy Commission under the CEC’s Electric School Bus Bi-Directional Infrastructure funding opportunity.

The grant is funding Nuvve’s RESCHOOL: Resilient Energy Solutions for Schools project, showcasing the transformative potential of electric school buses and bi-directional charging infrastructure to enhance the resilience of California’s power grid.

Locally, several school districts have already plugged in to Nuvve: Cajon Valley Union School District and both Ramona and San Diego Unified school districts.

Nuvve, Blue Bird Take on Texas

Five days after its October public offering, Nuvve announced that Blue Bird Corporation (NASDAQ: BLBD) replaced the Martinsville (Texas) Independent School District’s diesel fleet with five electric buses, five Nuvve Level II chargers and the innovative AI-powered Nuvve FleetBox 2.0 charge management software.

Poliasne is championing Nuvve’s Astrea AI artificial intelligence technology, which launched in June after several years of research and development.

Astrea AI forecasts have demonstrated 97% accuracy and provide Nuvve and its fleet customers the opportunity to maximize revenues with the right bid matched to available fleet capacity and for the optimal frequency regulation market.

“With Astrea AI, we can predict when a vehicle will be charging, leaving on a route and the amount of energy it will need between now and its departure,” he said. “We say, ‘We know better than you when you’ll be using your car next.’”

Nuvve Holding Corp.

FOUNDED: 2010
CO-FOUNDER AND CEO: Greg Poilasne
HEADQUARTERS: Liberty Station, San Diego
BUSINESS: Green energy tech
REVENUE: $5.37 million (2022)
STOCK: Nasdaq: NVVE
EMPLOYEES: 60
WEBSITE: nuvve.com
CONTACT: 619-483-3448
SOCIAL IMPACT: Renewable energy helps reduce pollution, offers grid sustainability
NOTABLE: Nuvve HQ are in San Diego but company also has offices in Delaware, London and Denmark.