National Grid Partners, the corporate venture capital and innovation arm of one of the world’s largest utilities, has officially announced an investment of $100 million in artificial intelligence (AI) startups that are advancing the future of energy.
According to certain reports, these newly-committed funds will be used to accelerate development of a more efficient, resilient, and dynamic grid which, on its part, can support economic growth, reduce customer costs, help meet climate goals, and at the same time, ensure energy security.
For better understanding, National Grid Partners, the utility industry’s only Silicon Valley based corporate venture group, is an organization best known for investing in a wide array of technologies to deliver rapid impact for utilities and the broader energy sector. At the moment, more than 80% of its portfolio companies currently rely on National Grid business units to streamline operations, boost safety and reliability, improve customer service, as well as speed up the development of tomorrow’s energy networks.
“Power systems like National Grid’s are seeing unprecedented challenges, with soaring demand driven by datacenters and the electrification of heat and transport, as well as requirements for a more flexible grid with the rise of renewables and EVs,” said John Pettigrew, CEO of National Grid plc. “We are seeing artificial intelligence play a vital role resolving these issues and delivering compelling results across our operations. Scaling AI will continue to help National Grid provide the most efficient, modern grid available for our millions of customers in the U.S. and U.K.”
Talk about some of these business units on a slightly deeper level, we begin from AiDASH, an entity which unites satellite data with proprietary AI to help utilities monitor infrastructure networks in real time. For instance, thanks to a better knowledge of potentially hazardous trees near power lines, National Grid has successfully managed to cut down on outages by 30% in Massachusetts.
The next business unit in line would be Exodigo that uses AI and advanced sensors to gauge underground, and therefore, avoid costly missteps when expanding energy infrastructure. In New York, to give you can example again, National Grid has deployed Exodigo to accelerate electric substation and transmission line expansion by discovering and avoiding buried obstacles.
Another business unit worth a mention here would be Luminance. Luminance develops legal-grade AI to automate and augment every touchpoint a business has with its contracts. Hence, this particular platform is currently used to streamline negotiation and analysis of contracts, along with other legal documents that become critical when it comes to accelerating the deployment of clean energy and smart grid assets.
Joining the mix would be Sensat, a business unit well-equipped to leverage AI to help critical infrastructure owners in the context of visualizing and collaborating via digital twins. The idea behind that is to achieve faster project completion and lowered costs.
National Grid has, markedly enough, deployed Sensat to speed substation upgrades and connect data centers to the grid; causing fewer contractor errors, increased worker safety, and more weeks pared from the traditional surveying process.
We also haven’t touched upon Urbint, a unit that conceives AI-based risk management capabilities to predict threats against critical infrastructure and worker safety. As of today, National Grid is using Urbint’s solution to reduce costly and dangerous pipeline damage from third-party excavation. Urbint also helped National Grid identify 35% more potential field-worker hazards than manual methods.
“AI is helping us improve operations and achieve efficiencies we never could with legacy technologies,” said Steve Smith, President of National Grid Partners and Chief Strategy and Regulation Officer at National Grid. “Our AI-powered portfolio is doing everything from accelerating critical construction timelines to boosting transmission line capacity for National Grid. And with more than 120 other global utilities in our NextGrid Alliance, we’re speeding these innovations across the industry. This $100 million commitment will help National Grid accelerate AI deployments to build a more robust and intelligent grid,”
