Today, we are proud to announce,Fuse completed a $12 million financing round. Fuse is a core contributor to Project Zero, which is a DePIN for renewable energy aimed at addressing major energy coordination issues.

Fuse is a full-stack renewable energy company founded by Alan Chang and Charles Orr, both of whom were Revolut early employees. Alan and Charles played a crucial role in the early growth of Revolut and began focusing on addressing the energy crisis in 2022. Over the past few years, FUSE has built a modern, technology-driven energy company: establishing robust data and engineering systems aimed at serving customers at a cost and efficiency superior to traditional three-letter public utility giants.

Currently, FUSE operates large-scale solar and wind power plants, conducts Distributed Energy Resources (DER) installation business, and serves tens of thousands of households in the UK as a regulated electricity supplier.

But that's not enough. To meet the growing energy demand around the world, we need to add 4000 terawatt hours of generating capacity each year over the next decade (https://www.we-online.com/en/news-center/blog?d=poweringthefuture), roughly equivalent to building the entire U.S. power grid from scratch each year. By 2030, an additional $4 trillion investment per year is required for modernizing the grid, energy storage, and transmission infrastructure, an amount that exceeds the annual GDP of Germany or Japan (https://about.bnef.com/blog/global-net-zero-will-require-21-trillion-investment-in-power-grids/).

When you add geopolitical complexity, the problem becomes even more serious: thousands of jurisdictions, cumbersome bureaucratic procedures and regulatory agencies, and market participants with different incentives and constraints. We are facing a huge energy problem for the next decade. A completely new approach is needed, and this is exactly the mission of Project Zero.

Project Zero is a renewable energy DePIN designed to accelerate the expansion and utilization of distributed energy resources (DER) by incentivizing network participants to shift demand to renewable energy periods, support electric travel, and generate new capacity through solar panels or batteries.

Energy generation and coordination is one of the biggest opportunities in our lifetime, and it will not be solved through traditional tracks or structures alone. In operating FUSE, Alan and Charles realized that encryption-driven capital formation mechanism is crucial for the way forward. Project Zero is such a mechanism: it serves as an incentive layer, acting as the foundation for the most decentralized part of the energy value chain coordination.

Decentralized Energy Stack

The main trend in the energy sector is horizontal integration within specific segments, such as generation, transmission, or retail, rather than vertical integration across the value chain.

Like [Trinity]Dynegy Such installers focus on the deployment of distributed energy resources (DER), but do not engage in direct energy retail business. Instead, retailers such as NRG Energy typically do not provide DER installation services unless these services are bundled with traditional power generation. Vistra Corp, a major U.S. power generation company with assets covering natural gas, coal, nuclear, and solar, operates multiple retail brands such as TXU Energy, Ambit Energy, and (https://www.dynegy.com/), but there is an issue with inefficient coordination of its generation portfolio supply and demand. These entities mostly operate independently, limiting their ability to achieve maximum operational returns.

These inefficiencies are particularly severe. Inconsistent data formats and incomplete consumption telemetry hinder real-time monitoring and demand forecasting for grid operators. The fragmented licensing framework between jurisdictions hinders economies of scale for renewable resource installers and service operators. Information silos hinder reasonable pricing and Risk Management for retailers.

Fuse starts from first principles, focusing on the retail energy Supply Chain, and intentionally operates at every level of the stack to minimize efficiency losses at every step of the generation to distribution lifecycle. Their mission is to provide cheap, clean energy at scale and work backward from there.

In the near future, this means we need to address the following two specific issues:

• Consumer behavior change - How to encourage global users to change consumption patterns, more effectively balance grid load, participate in demand response programs, and further adopt residential renewable energy products and distributed energy resources (such as electric vehicle chargers, batteries, solar inverters, heat pumps, smart thermostats)?
• Retail energy distribution standard issues - How to bridge the disconnect processes between retail energy suppliers, grid operators, virtual power plants, and DER installation service providers that historically made achieving economies of scale difficult through geographical expansion?

Project Zero complements Fuse's vertical integration strategy by providing consumers with incentives to flexibly adjust energy consumption and build new renewable energy capabilities.

Large-scale aggregation of energy assets

Fuse aims to transform households into conscious and actively engaged participants in energy choices.

The earth needs proactive resource consumers, not consumers who consider energy use as a line item in their monthly bills. FUSE provides a delightful consumer energy experience, accelerating this transition while mediating the incentive allocation of Project Zero to influence consumption patterns and encourage the installation of new capacity.

As an energy retailer that directly engages with customers, Fuse has a structural advantage in capturing and distributing the value created by solving energy coordination challenges: promoting Demand Response Programs (DRP), operating Virtual Power Plants (VPP), building low latency metering systems, and advancing new interoperable data standards.

Demand Response Plan

Fuse dynamically adjusts the edge energy consumption based on grid conditions, enabling it to capture DRP The untapped potential. Although DRP can reduce peak electricity demand by 20%, the majority of eligible households worldwide do not participate in these programs. This represents millions of kilowatt-hours of electricity that can be shifted or reduced during peak periods, significantly reducing operating costs.

When there is high demand for electricity or a shortage of supply, Project Zero can distribute tokens to owners of energy resources within the network (smart appliances, water heaters, thermostats, cogeneration systems, solar panels, batteries) as incentives - not just discounts - to reduce or adjust their consumption. This balancing ability enables FUSE to stabilize the power grid and keep supply and demand consistent at critical moments.

Source: NYC DCAS

These consumption adjustments can bring benefits of up to $3,000 in reduced demand per megawatt-hour for each household. If implemented on a large scale, a portion of the benefits from these plans can be returned to consumers in the form of Tokens, which can be used to drop energy bills or traded directly for instant rewards.

With more and more households incentivized to choose dynamic consumption adjustments through the Project Zero protocol, Fuse can make large bids in DRP events. This enables Fuse to provide greater and more predictable load reduction or adjustment capabilities, and we believe that utilities and grid operators are willing to pay a premium for this.

Virtual Power Plant

DER Installers (solar panels, battery storage, electric vehicles, smart appliances) often fail to collaborate with energy retailers to optimize the scale and configuration of home systems. This not only results in lower penetration rates in the market that urgently needs DER, but also causes the systems to be disconnected from the overall grid.

In the vision of FUSE, Zero incentivizes households to build new renewable energy capabilities and ensures that these new resources can be efficiently utilized. This enables FUSE to act as its own virtual power plant (VPP），将所有 DER 组合成一个灵活的实体，提供有价值的电网服务。

When the grid is facing high demand or supply shortages, Fuse instructs DER to increase energy production or release stored electricity (for example, solar and battery storage systems in virtual power plants can quickly release or absorb electricity to help maintain grid frequency within a narrow range, or smart thermostats and water heaters can temporarily shut down or adjust to provide demand-side response).

As a virtual power plant, FUSE participates in the wholesale energy market, aggregating its DER footprint in the local market, enabling it to bid at a larger and more predictable scale than pure energy retailers. FUSE can also provide services such as voltage support, which are crucial for grid stability. These services can generate substantial income, often up to $100,000 per megawatt capacity per year.

By improving the reliability of these services through advanced metering and value-added analysis-based services, we expect Fuse to obtain more favorable contract terms and higher payments. Subsequently, the proceeds generated from the operation of these markets will be feedbacked to users who contribute assets to the network.

Advanced Metering and Real-time Data

One persistent issue facing energy producers and retailers is the lack of real-time data on power plant failures, demand fluctuations, and other factors directly impacting energy production. Without this data, accurately and profitably pricing energy becomes a significant challenge.

Fuse fills this gap by collecting random minute-level data using direct relationships with consumers. These real-time inputs are fed into Fuse's advanced billing engine, guiding all pricing decisions. We believe this will enable the company to participate in the wholesale market with higher profitability, meaning providing cheaper and cleaner energy for every market of network services.

With the expansion of customer base and a clear perspective on the service grid, we believe that FUSE is better positioned than most companies to achieve profitability in the energy market and therefore able to assist other companies.

Build open protocol

Under large-scale application, Project Zero is an open platform that provides visual information on all generated and consumed energy resources, which can be accessed without permission by any participant in the energy value chain.

As Fuse accumulates more and more energy assets at the edge, Project Zero begins to act as a powerful, trusted neutral protocol layer. This is the primary correct way to build a global energy system in the 21st century: accessible energy resources connected through consistent, interoperable data standards, upon which anyone can build products and services.

The Road to Abundant Energy

Compared to the giants in the field, Fuse's unique advantage lies in using encryption coordination mechanisms to optimize the system and eliminate unnecessary links. This strategy not only enables more efficient acquisition and retention of users, but also creates a closed-loop generation and distribution process, making Fuse a potential global innovative energy retailer: through data advantages and system improvements, conducting energy transactions more profitably, promoting the popularization of renewable energy, and bringing returns to customers in every aspect.

Alan and Charles have accumulated rich operational experience in the regulated consumption market. The Fuse team is a group of customer-centric developers and market operators dedicated to addressing today's most urgent energy challenges.

Fuse is gradually advancing the Project Zero, a core project to build an open and shared platform, taking a key step towards the goal of 'almost zero cost energy'. For more details, please visit: www.zero2050.com

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