When powering large companies with multi-building campuses, the allocation system is outdated. Unlike homeowners who pay only for what they actually use, campuses purchase standard monthly capacity. Common sense dictates that this capacity should be based on your maximum usage needs. This is true even if the company consumes such maximum usage only rarely, such as during a single busy season.
This was a situation that really bothered SaLisa Berrien, founder and CEO of COI Energy. After earning a degree in mechanical engineering (later an MBA), she spent 25 years working as an energy engineer for major power companies such as PECO, Con Edison, and Exelon, as well as clean energy startups.
Berian chose this field because when he was a child, there were times when his parents couldn’t pay the electricity bill. “We were often in the dark, and as a child, my self-esteem was low,” she told TechCrunch. Other children who knew about her situation made fun of her.
So when she got her degree and got a job at a power company, “all my friends were like, ‘You’re crazy. The field is stagnant. It’s a white, male-dominated, older, male field. Why are you doing this?'” And for me, it was personal, because I knew what it was like to be a kid,” she said. Berrian wanted to make electricity more efficient, more affordable, and more available so that no child would have to live without it.
She worked on customer operations, smart grids, and clean energy programs.
“As an engineer, I go into the field and make recommendations on how to improve the energy performance of buildings and how to eliminate bottlenecks in production lines,” Berian said.
She learned how to use big data to optimize energy efficiency. But no one was addressing the fundamental problem. Companies were storing and paying for far more energy than they used.
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Corporate customers kept asking her why they were being overcharged. “I agree,” she said. “Why can’t I just pay for what I use on demand?”
Berian’s answer resulted in three patents (and more to come), founded COI Energy based on the technology, and assembled a team that included building management, energy engineers, and former energy executives. She hired people with expertise in everything from regulation to pricing.
COI’s solution is a marketplace where companies within the same utility can sell a portion of their allocated energy when COI’s data predicts that the energy is not needed. COI is a Startup Battlefield Top 20 finalist and will be pitching its technology at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 in San Francisco this week.
COI installs patented energy gateways at all customer sites to measure energy usage. It is tied to building systems and SCADA systems. According to Berian, it is hardware agnostic and can work with any existing utility or building energy system. After collecting data over a period of time, the platform predicts how much electricity a business actually needs. “We can predict within 90 days,” she says.
Companies can then decide how much unused energy they want to release. COI pays companies for that capacity, and buyers in the market pay COI to acquire it. “If a customer gives us 100 kilowatts, we will pay for that 100 kilowatts, and the buyer will buy it from us.”
COI is still in the pre-seed stage and has raised $3.5 million from investors including former Talen Energy executive Paul Farr, Morgan Stanley Inclusive and Sustainable Ventures, Kachuwa Impact Fund, Chloe Capital, and some crowdfunding from Republic.
But the startup is already making money through five test customers, all of whom own at least 50 buildings. It operates in California, Florida, Massachusetts and New York and has a waiting list. Additionally, Berian said that COI is in talks to become a solution provider as Switzerland enacts a national energy policy that will allow businesses and households to share capacity from 2026.
Additionally, remembering her plight as a child, Berian’s startup decided to donate 1% of the savings companies make on its platform to non-profit organizations that help people with disadvantaged energy needs. These are organizations that help pay your bills, provide weatherization, and offer energy programs like solar power.
“We’re paying it forward in so-called kilowatts for good,” Berrian said.
Her goal is to provide technology to help energy systems that are currently overwhelmed. “Instead of wasting our capacity, we’re sharing it. So we’re making the planet better and increasing our bottom line. And at the same time, we’re supporting and uplifting our communities,” she said.
If you want to learn more about COI Energy from the company itself, check out dozens of other companies, hear pitches, and hear from guest speakers on four different stages, join us at Disrupt in San Francisco from Monday through Wednesday. Click here for more information.
