Emrgy is a company dedicated to decarbonizing the critical and vast real estate segment of water infrastructure.

Emrgy, a woman-led renewable energy technology and project developer, has raised $18.4m in a Series A funding round to deploy distributed hydropower projects, expand its development, operations and engineering teams, and open a new turbine assembly facility in Colorado.

Emrgy places small turbines in irrigation canals to generate electricity. This can be a significant source of power because the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation alone operates 1,600 miles of main canals with water flowing swiftly along their length. Though a kind of hydro power, these turbines have no environmental impact such as from the large riverine projects, and are modular, cost-effective, and quick-to-deploy systems.

“Unlike conventional hydropower which requires gravity drop and head pressure for effective operation, Emrgy’s technology optimizes only on the kinetic energy or velocity of the volume of water flowing through a channel,” says the company’s website.

Oval Park Capital led the funding round, which included Fifth Wall, Blitzscaling Ventures, Overlay Capital, and Veriten. Emrgy’s proprietary modular turbine technology delivers low-cost renewable power to energy off-takers by leveraging existing underutilized waterways and infrastructure, minimizing disruptive construction and harvesting power continuously as water flows.

Emrgy will develop new projects across Western US, Europe, and Australasia, catering to agricultural, municipal, and utility off-takers with a goal to provide power.

Furthermore, Emrgy plans to launch its first regional manufacturing facility in Aurora, Colorado this spring. The facility is estimated to have a capacity of 5MW per month and is expected to hire up to 30 engineers and operations specialists in 2023.

Notable commercial customers for Emrgy’s solution include Denver Water, Davis and Weber Counties Canal Company, and Oakdale Irrigation District in the US, with projects in New Zealand and a pilot system in South Africa.

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