Seed funding raised from Shearwater Growth Equity

April 20, 2020 - Written by Joss Kesby
Diffuse Energy, an Australian small wind turbine manufacturer, today announced it has secured a $922,307 project in partnership with the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA). The project include.....
We are very pleased to announce that we have received seed funding from the fantastic Shearwater Growth Equity team, joining other great companies Earlytrade, Playground XYZ, Sitemate and SalesPreso.
Thank you very much to Mike Gregg, Zac Zavos and Charles Gibbon for the investment - we are really looking forward to working with you to help transition the world to renewable energy!
The investment will allow Diffuse to scale production of its small wind turbines for customers in the global telecommunications industry, which is expected to spend more than US$3.4bn on distributed energy solutions by 2024* to provide more sustainable and resilient communication networks.
We are changing the way telecommunications companies buy renewable technology. Our commercial model removes upfront hardware costs in favour of a monthly subscription.
Zac Zavos, the Managing Partner of Shearwater Growth Equity said, “We invested in Diffuse Energy because they are operating in an unambiguously large and growing renewable energy market. Small wind is the natural complement to solar in that wind often blows when the sun isn’t shining. The founding team are very strong and committed to building a generationally great company. Finally, we saw the potential for software-like recurring revenue from their small wind turbines.”
We have proven the value of our technology for Vertel, a leading provider of mission and life critical telecommunication network services in late 2019. The Diffuse Energy small wind turbines continued to power critical voice and data services for NSW Police, Rural Fire Services, State Emergency Services and NSW Health while catastrophic bushfires raged throughout the Mid North Coast and Coffs Harbour region.
Andrew Findlay, Executive Director of Vertel said, “the Diffuse Energy wind turbine provided alternative power to key communication sites during a time when many sites were affected by mains power failure”
“Not only could we monitor energy production and consumption remotely and in real-time, but we were able to keep our sites and network services running for our government and the emergency services customers when they needed it most to support communities.”
Diffuse Energy’s small wind turbines are not only applicable to telecommunications companies, with remote mine operators, utilities, off-grid communities and even tiny-home designers interested in the small-format, high-output systems.
Shearwater Growth Equity is a $50m venture fund. Shearwater’s three founding partners are Charles Gibbon (ex-Chair and current Non-Executive Director of WiseTech Global), Mike Gregg (Non-Executive Director of WiseTech Global), and Zac Zavos (founder of Conversant Media, acquired by ASX listed HT&E).
*2015 Navigant Research (now Guidehouse Insights) report – ‘Distributed Generation and Energy Storage in Telecom Networks’.
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