Tallinn-based EV charging startup VOOL has secured nearly €3 million in a funding round led by Specialist VC to grow its electric vehicle charging infrastructure and develop technology for optimizing household electricity use. The startup’s technology efficiently manages the electricity grid, ensuring reliable and cost-effective charging for both businesses and residential users. The investment will be used to increase EV charger production, expand international sales, and create innovative products for optimizing household power consumption. With this funding, VOOL’s total investment now totals €7.62 million, with backing from various investors, including angel investors, real estate developers, and government grants.
“Currently, you still have access to only a fraction of the full capacity of the grid, even though the whole of Europe is connected to three phases of electricity,” explains the co-founder and CEO of VOOL, Juhan Härm. “We use all three phases and automatically switch between them when needed. This way, we can offer reliable and sustainable automatic charging,” he adds. “We just recently started serial production and the first chargers have now been sent out to customers,” updates Härm.
If consumption in any of the three phases becomes too high, its technology tells VOOL chargers to switch consumption to a less loaded phase. Electrical fuses will never trip.
“With further development of new products, it will be possible to use the technology for the whole household,” says Härm.
VOOL’s technology monitors your electricity consumption as well as grid load and switches consumers over to another phase all on its own.
The investment round was led by Specialist VC and attracted a mix of influential real estate developers, such as Kaamos Group and Astri Group, as well as investment company Amalfi. New angel investors participating in the funding round include Taavi Veskimägi (the former chairman of the board of Estonia’s independent electricity and gas system operator Elering), and Kuldar Väärsi (founder of Milrem Robotics). However, the biggest angel investors were VOOL’s own employees, giving 15% of the investment round.
VOOL’s current angel investors include the former president of Estonia, Kersti Kaljulaid, the first CIO of Estonia and founder of the e-Residency programme, Taavi Kotka, the first employee of Pipedrive and the current chief architect at VOOL, Elar Nellis, and many others.
According to research from McKinsey, Europe will need at least 29 million private charging points by 2030. This represents an approximately 77-fold increase from the charging stations available today. By using the grid more efficiently, VOOL enables real-estate developers to avoid additional costs associated with infrastructure upgrades and building new charging spots, thus accelerating the energy transition.
VOOL enables maximum cost-efficiency. Its software tracks the electricity prices and ensures that the EV is charged at the lowest cost possible within the set timeframe. “This enables one to save up to 90% on the charging costs,” Härm promises.
The company was founded in 2018 by energy experts Juhan Härm (CEO), Sander Vahtras (CPO) and Hindrik Kilter (CTO). The current investment round brought its total funding to €7,62M, including a grant of €3M from The European Union’s EIC Accelerator innovation fund in 2022, €1,62M in 2023 from the government of Estonia, and €1,7M from the first seed investment round in 2023.
Click to read more funding news.
