The modern grid is a cacophony of new voices. A rooftop solar inverter chatters in one protocol, a home battery hums in another, and an electric vehicle charger sings in a third. For a software developer trying to orchestrate them all into a virtual power plant, it’s less like conducting a symphony and more like trying to herd cats that speak different languages. The bespoke integration work is slow, expensive, and never really done. It’s the kind of thankless, repetitive plumbing that can kill a good climate tech idea before it ever gets to scale.
Derapi, a San Carlos-based startup, is betting that climate software builders are tired of being plumbers. Its product is a single API that promises to act as a universal translator for distributed energy resources, or DERs. Plug into Derapi once, the pitch goes, and you get immediate software access to a growing ecosystem of supported devices, from solar panels to batteries to EVs, without writing and maintaining a custom integration for each one [Derapi.com, retrieved 2026]. It’s a classic platform play, applied to the messy, fragmented hardware of the energy transition.
The bet on abstraction
Derapi’s core bet is that the complexity of DER integration is becoming a critical bottleneck. As utilities roll out more demand response and virtual power plant programs, and as companies build software to optimize behind-the-meter assets for savings or revenue, the need to connect to a widening array of devices grows exponentially. The traditional approach,building a direct integration for each manufacturer’s API,consumes engineering resources that could be spent on the unique, valuable logic of an application.
Derapi proposes to own that integration layer. By standardizing the communication, it aims to turn device connectivity from a custom engineering project into a utility, paid for via API calls. The immediate customer is the DER software developer, who gets faster time-to-market and lower ongoing maintenance costs. The long-term customer is anyone who needs a flexible, scalable aggregation of distributed assets, from a utility running a VPP to a startup managing a fleet of EV chargers [Derapi.com/solutions/, retrieved 2026].
A team built for the energy stack
The founders bring a specific blend of product and sector experience to the problem. Thomas Lee, the President, cut his teeth in product management at AutoGrid and Enphase Energy, two companies deeply embedded in the grid edge software and hardware ecosystems [Tech Funding News, retrieved 2026]. He saw the integration challenge from the inside. Stina Brock, who joined as CEO, led the Valence SaaS business unit at Proterra, where she was responsible for software that managed charging and grid integration for electric bus fleets [Stina.io / LinkedIn, retrieved 2026]. Her background is in taking complex, physical assets and making them intelligible and valuable through software.
The broader leadership team, according to the company, includes alumni from EnergyHub, EnerNOC, and other energy software veterans, claiming over 50 years of combined experience in the climate and DER space [Climatebase, retrieved 2026]. This isn’t a team of generalist API builders; it’s a group that has lived through the specific pains of the energy sector’s interoperability problems.
Early signals and a notable partnership
Derapi is still early. Public traction metrics and a named customer roster are not yet part of the story. The most concrete signal of validation is a $7 million seed round closed in February 2026, led by Earthshot Ventures with participation from Tuesday Capital, Susquehanna Sustainable Investments, and others [The SaaS News, February 2026]. Earthshot’s focus on climate tech infrastructure suggests investors see the platform layer as a necessary piece of the decarbonization puzzle.
A more tangible sign of progress is a partnership with Solis, a major manufacturer of solar inverters and energy storage systems. The collaboration is designed to give Solis customers streamlined access to VPP and demand response programs via the Derapi platform [Solar Power World / pv magazine USA, retrieved 2026]. This is the kind of manufacturer relationship that is crucial for Derapi’s model; it needs device makers to buy into its vision of a unified software layer.
| Partnership | Scope | Significance |
|---|---|---|
| Solis | Inverter & storage integration for VPP programs | Provides a pipeline of real assets and validates the model with a hardware maker [Solar Power World / pv magazine USA, retrieved 2026] |
The integration frontier
For Derapi to succeed, it must navigate a frontier defined by three expanding frontiers. The market is growing, but so is the complexity.
- Device sprawl. The universe of DERs is not static. New models of batteries, smart panels, EV chargers, and even smart appliances come to market constantly. Derapi’s value is directly tied to the breadth of its supported device list. It must build integrations faster than the market invents new devices, or risk becoming just another partial solution.
- The standards question. The industry is not devoid of standards efforts, like SunSpec or IEEE 2030.5. Derapi’s role could be to implement these standards consistently across vendors, or it could become a de facto standard itself if it achieves enough adoption. Navigating this landscape without being sidelined by an official protocol is a delicate act.
- The two-sided network. The classic platform challenge: you need device integrations to attract developers, and you need developers to justify building more device integrations. The Solis partnership is a smart wedge, providing a ready-made stream of assets to jump-start one side of the network.
The unit economics of avoided work
The financial case for an API like this boils down to a simple calculation of avoided engineering cost. Suppose a mid-sized DER software company spends $500,000 annually on a team of two engineers solely to build and maintain integrations with a dozen different device manufacturers. Derapi’s API, priced at a fraction of that cost, represents pure margin recovery. The math gets more compelling as the number of supported devices grows. If a developer needs to connect to 50 different inverter models, the cost of doing it in-house becomes prohibitive, while Derapi’s marginal cost per additional device trends toward zero.
For the climate impact, the calculation is about acceleration. Every month saved in development time is a month sooner that a new VPP or grid optimization service can be deployed, aggregating megawatts of flexible capacity. In the race to decarbonize the grid, speed is a form of carbon abatement.
The incumbent Derapi must beat isn’t another startup; it’s the inertia of in-house integration. It’s the internal team at every energy software company that says, “We can build it ourselves.” Derapi’s job is to make that statement seem as quaint as building your own server rack. The grid’s new chorus of devices is waiting for a conductor.
Sources
- [Derapi, retrieved 2026] Derapi - Data Infrastructure for Distributed Energy | https://derapi.com/
- [Derapi.com/solutions/, retrieved 2026] Solutions - Derapi | https://derapi.com/solutions/
- [The SaaS News, February 2026] Derapi Raises $7 Million Seed Round | https://www.thesaasnews.com/news/derapi-raises-7-million-seed-round
- [Tech Funding News, retrieved 2026] Derapi Company Profile | https://www.techfundingnews.com/derapi/
- [Stina.io / LinkedIn, retrieved 2026] Stina Brock Background | https://stina.io/
- [Climatebase, retrieved 2026] Derapi on Climatebase | https://climatebase.org/company/derapi
- [Solar Power World / pv magazine USA, retrieved 2026] Derapi and Solis Partnership | https://www.solarpowerworldonline.com/
- [Derapi.com/about/, retrieved 2026] About - Derapi | https://derapi.com/about/