Buzz solutions (Palo Alto, CA)
Artificial intelligence, actionable insights, and predictive analytics for power line and grid inspections.
Project Description
How can AI support automated inspection? In this project, EPRI and Buzz Solutions will leverage AI to review drone-collected, distribution inspection imagery. AI systems that can automate this review process can potentially save utilities time and cost. However, there are unknowns related to efficiency improvements as well as prediction quality.
Utility inspectors will interact with Buzz Solutions’ Power AI software. EPRI intends to investigate the quality of these AI-based predictions and study the efficiency impact of the PowerAI tool.
Community Energy Labs (Portland, OR)
Grid-smart building controls that enable commercial building owners and facility managers to upgrade and autonomously operate clean, affordable, all-electric buildings without sacrificing occupant comfort, or disrupting power markets or the grid.

Project Description
The project with Community Energy Labs seeks to demonstrate a building’s energy flexibility during operations through building energy management systems (BEMS) by cultivating a deeper understanding of how building owner and end-user preferences, demographics, and goals interact with building systems, envelope, and other actors, with schools in California.
Observations from this project will form the basis for learning algorithms and optimization objectives tailored to specific customer personas and market segments to more reliably predict and shape building loads. Furthermore, the team seeks to optimize energy cost (demand charges and energy) and electrification goals for commercial customers with limited budget and staffing.
Copper Labs (San Francisco, CA)
Wireless energy monitor that delivers consumption and power quality data from electric, gas, and water meters so utilities can engage consumers with actionable insights for demand management, electrification, grid planning, and distribution network health monitoring.
Project Description
How can advanced metering infrastructure be leveraged for real-time insights on customer energy use? Copper Labs has developed a wireless energy monitor that can connect with electricity, gas, and water meters and measure local voltage to provide utilities with high-resolution data in real-time.
This project seeks to evaluate how these insights can impact customer energy use in behavioral demand response programs. Additional data on local voltage and gas usage will be assessed for its potential to inform grid operations and electrification. The proposed project would involve a pilot test with 750 Xcel Energy customers with AMI meters that are participating in behavioral demand response. Pilot testing depends on integrating and validating Copper Labs’ backend with Xcel Energy's metering infrastructure, which may delay project launch.
Datch (San Francisco, CA)
Voice AI technology engineered specifically for the industrial workforce to interface with enterprise databases.
Project Description
Voice assistant software is playing a larger role in our daily lives and is showing promise in industrial use cases. How can electric utilities harness the power of this technology to improve workforce efficiencies, enhance safety, and increase adherence to procedures?
Con Edison and EPRI are exploring this question with Datch. Con Edison will work with Datch, who has experience in various industries, to integrate their voice assistant software into one of Con Edison’s work planning applications to enable their planners to dictate work order requirements via a mobile device. The demonstration project will aim to replace manual and sometimes duplicative tasks and provide Con Edison and the project team the opportunity to work through voice assistant software integration requirements and processes.
DCSix Technologies (Cork, Ireland)
An energy monitoring platform that reduces energy bills and encourages the pursuit of more sustainable energy use.
Project Description
How can a low-income community benefit from a circuit-level energy monitoring service? SCE and EPRI will work with DCSix Technologies to install their energy monitoring equipment (Wattrics) at a multifamily residential complex in Willowbrook, CA. Wattrics will provide visibility to all sub-meter energy use in the common areas, community building, and within many resident's apartments.
DCSix’s cloud-based platform will use data analytics to determine the potential to improve energy efficiency, reduce energy costs, and reduce carbon emissions through behavioral changes or technology improvements. The front end of the Wattrics system will be available for the property manager, the dashboard will use targeted data insights to illustrate how energy is used throughout the community and identify where there is scope to reduce energy costs. The back end of Wattrics will be used to understand how upcoming Time-of-Use rates could affect resident energy bills, with insights drawn on how residents can avoid the increased costs. EPRI will investigate all other potential use cases of the Wattrics platform to leverage reliable and granular circuit-level data analytics to improve a building's energy efficiency, costs, and carbon footprint.
Design Interactive (Orlando, FL)
Augmented Reality application that empowers experts to transfer knowledge, by making content easily authored by front-line employees. No software engineers are needed.
Project Description
A fast-growing market is training & education (T&E) for people in an electric industry culture where change has become ubiquitous. As a result, new tools are being introduced to make the T&E process more effective and efficient for learners thereby accelerating the learning experience and making the experience a good one.
These T&E platforms are facilitating distance learning formats which are commonly referred to as virtual or remote exposures. Consequently, new software platforms are emerging to host training materials to facilitate and improve the entire T&E process. Consolidated Edison is sponsoring Design Interactive’s XRMENTOR™ software, an instructor-led and self-guided training platform that is enhanced by augmented reality. The product will be demonstrated as a potentially more effective alternative delivery platform to traditional PowerPoints, and instructional videos to aid in the distance learning format. Previously developed materials by Consolidated Edison will be hosted by XRMENTOR and Consolidated Edison instructors will live stream a classroom experience using the ClassroomXR™ feature. XRMENTOR™’s ClassroomXR™ feature supports a simple engagement configuration with class participants whereby only the instructor wears a HoloLens 2 – there is no lens required by class participants. Our use case for the software demonstration is a cable splicing protocol training session needed by Consolidated Edison for its field crews. The project will assess the learning effectiveness and costs of implementation for the XRMENTOR software.
Dynamhex (Baltimore, MD)
Energy data API platform that pulls on a national GHG inventory to visualizes complex energy consumption and emissions data for individual, corporate, and government entities.
Project Description
With many states, cities, local jurisdictions, and corporations setting up their own decarbonization goals, the role of buildings as a lever in ensuring economy-wide decarbonization is gaining in importance. At the same time, utilities which run energy efficiency, demand response, and other energy conservation customer programs are ideally positioned to work alongside with states, city, and corporations to help align their program offerings with decarbonization goals.
Dynamhex, Ameren, and EPRI teamed up to address how Ameren’s customer programs are helping to decarbonize the buildings sector in Missouri and Illinois using Dynamhex’s Decarbonization-as-a-Service platform. The platform presents a unique way to understand how buildings can contribute to decarbonization. By analyzing the carbon footprint of the building stock at the city and county levels using a variety of energy efficiency and demand flexibility measures while taking customer demographics, equity, and social justice into account the platform helps to optimize customer program rollout for Ameren.
Enerbrain (Turin, Italy)
AI-powered software that optimizes HVAC energy consumption for sustainable, comfortable, and efficient buildings.
Project Description
The demonstration with enerbrain is aimed at developing a scalable plug & play solution for monitoring and control of HVAC systems. The project will test enerbrain’s AI algorithm to optimize buildings’ energy use and indoor comfort conditions while enabling remote real-time monitoring and control.
Part of the enerbrain solution will be tested in EPRI Charlotte building 3 to control small independent AC Units, with the goal to generate energy savings while maintaining the comfort levels. The demonstration is focused on the electrical rooms of building 3 to minimize the impacts of no/low occupancy in the office spaces during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Eneryield (Gothenburg, Sweden)
Machine learning algorithms for intelligent energy analytics and control of electricity flow.
Project Description
Eneryield is a young company specializing in bringing Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) to bear on existing utility data streams. In this project, EPRI is working with NYPA to see if Eneryield’s AI/ML techniques can help in predicting failures in a 26 miles underground/underwater cable.
Future Grid (Melbourne, Australia)
SaaS "toolkit" to address the power quality challenges caused by renewable technology.
Project Description
Worldwide, the increasing use of advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) has resulted in much more comprehensive and fine-grained measurements at many more points on the distribution network than had ever been gathered before. Turning this mountain of AMI data into actionable insights is the goal of this project.
Using the Software as a Service (SaaS) Future Grid Toolkit, the team, with FortisBC, Vermont Electric Co-Op, Future Grid, and EPRI, is going to explore is the detection and location of electric vehicles (EVs), photovoltaics (PVs), the detection and analysis of power quality anomalies, and the assessment of potential transformer health, overloading, and fault detection. Using these tools will help both FortisBC and Vermont Electric Co-Op prepare for increasing deployment of systems and devices to meet the goals of a decarbonized grid using renewable resources.
HeyCharge (Munich, Germany)
Device to enable electric car charging for apartments and garages.
Project Description
How can you provide electric vehicle charging where you need access control and fee collection but do so with a low overhead cost? Can you do so without the expense of a dedicated live network connection?
HeyCharge has developed a solution based on the use of consumer smartphones as the data transport mechanism for managed charging that eliminates the need for a live network connection to the charging hardware while still providing for fee collection and user authentication. This project seeks to explore the efficiencies gained and the challenges associated with the use of the HeyCharge technology approach with real-world testing. Through a lab-based demonstration at an EPRI facility, the team of Ameren, Tucson Electric Power, and EPRI will assess the installation, operation, charging consumer interface, and back-office tools provided with the HeyCharge system.
Indow (Portland, OR)
Window inserts that press into existing window frames to bring energy efficiency without requiring window replacement.

Project Description
There are millions of underperforming windows in the United States, especially in older buildings. Some windows do not even fully seal the opening, allowing for cold drafts to discomfort occupants and increase energy bills.
Indow’s new Indow Kit is a window insert that presses inside the window frames with no mounting bracket to block drafts 100%, reduce noise up to 70%, and lower heating and cooling energy bills up to 20%. This new concept is lower cost and is more flexible than Indow’s previous solution. The new Indow Kit also reduces shipping components and makes measuring the windows simpler. TVA and EPRI are working with Indow to demonstrate their new Indow Kit product in 20 disadvantaged/low-income homes in Tennessee to understand pre-installation requirements, installation best practices, customer satisfaction, and energy savings.
Live-EO (Berlin, Germany)
Satellite imagery and software to provide innovative infrastructure monitoring.
Project Description
Near-real-time and widespread assessment of storm damage have long been a desire by electric utilities. Ameren, FortisBC, and EPRI plan to work with LiveEO to use high-resolution synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite imagery (3 m and 0.5 m resolution) to detect changes along rights-of-way for more timely situational awareness following damaging weather events.
The research and demonstration will analyze the speed and accuracy of AI-based algorithms. The speed aspect will look at the acquisition of the before- and after-storm images and the time to analyze the imagery data. The utilities will document damage sustained during the storm to compare to the damage prediction. The project will explore 2 major storm events, one for each utility, that affect a designated area of 600 km2 for each utility.
Microgrid Labs (Boulder, CO)
Comprehensive power management and control systems for industrials, utilities, and microgrids.
Project Description
Transitioning from traditional to electric mobility is a capital-intensive process as electric vehicles are more expensive and need additional investments to develop the required charging infrastructure. These projects are also complicated by the several factors that influence their design, cost, and performance.
This project with Microgrid Labs is to provide technology services and support for EPRI’s research into potentially lower-cost methods of providing fleet electric vehicle feasibility studies and system design. The main interest of this research is to determine the efficiencies gained and the challenges associated with the use of Microgrid Labs’ technology, EVOPT, in a real-world setting.
Noteworthy AI (Stanford, CT)
Real-time inspection and inventory for distribution assets.
Project Description
Utility workers drive fleet vehicles every day. What if these vehicles capture imagery of overhead infrastructure as they drive? In this demonstration, Noteworthy AI with the support of FirstEnergy will install, demonstrate, and test a vehicle-mounted imaging solution.
Leveraging AI, utilities may be able to leverage these field-collected images to support inspection, inventory, and monitoring. In this demonstration, EPRI intends to evaluate the quality of inspection data and perform AI-based predictions.
Pano AI (San Francisco, CA)
Powers actionable intelligence for fire professionals with ultra-high-definition, 360° Pano Cam networks, and AI-powered wildfire detection.
Project Description
How can computer vision be better leveraged in the early detection and response to wildfires? The Pano AI project seeks to demonstrate how their web portal and alert center, in concert with customizable information layers and strategically located panoramic cameras, may automatically detect, and provide geospatial logistics on fire ignition incidents.
During high risk of fire days and seasons, the faster a fire event can be detected, geographically located, and responded to, the greater the opportunity to respond and limit the fire’s ability to spread. The Pano AI project seeks to improve (speed to detection) time and simultaneously use artificial intelligence to filter out false positives such as clouds and fog. Specific performance indicators will be monitored to better understand the potential of leveraging strategically located 360-degree view cameras. The performance indicators will help to answer questions such as; how does the platform improve net fire detection time, how does the simultaneous use of multiple cameras reduce false-positive rates, and can we expand existing imagery capabilities to provide 24/7 detection awareness during all weather and light/dark conditions.
Shifted Energy (Honolulu, HI)
Automated system that manages residential and commercial appliances to support load shaping across the electrical grid.
Project Description
Water heating is a large emitter, and electrification of this service is a sizeable wedge of the decarbonization path. New electric water heaters will predominantly be of the heat pump variety, but there is also a legacy of electric resistance heaters. Electric utilities stand to benefit from this transition because this growing electric load is inherently associated with energy storage.
DHowever, managing this load while ensuring continued customer satisfaction is challenging because one cold shower could put an end to the use of this device as a controllable load. Shifted Energy’s machine learning algorithms are very efficient at learning customer water heating profiles and can harness this knowledge to provide a utility or an aggregator with an accurate forecast of the load, along with an accurate accounting of the flexibility available. In this project, sponsored by EPRI’s AI initiative, we plan to compare the performance of a fleet of hundreds of water heaters managed by Shifted Energy’s algorithm with that of a control group.
Thermo.AI (Binghamton, NY)
AI-powered, smart controls for power plants to minimize emissions and maximize efficiency.
Project Description
How can cybersecurity defenders detect attacker’s tactics, techniques, and procedures once they have gained access to an industrial control system network? Cyber attackers can have access to networks for several months before being detected by cybersecurity teams.
They can also affect the operator view panels to make them appear normal, even when the physical system is operating in an unsafe condition. Even minor changes to operational setpoints can have a damaging impact. EPRI is collaborating with ThermoAI to develop machine learning and artificial intelligence approaches to detect these types of cyberattacks. Early detection of attacks allows responders to take action to minimize the impact of the attack.
Urban Electric Power (Pearl River, NY)
Zinc manganese dioxide battery technology for stationary storage.

Project Description
Energy storage adoption continues to grow at a rapid pace and is a crucial component for grid flexibility and to support renewable energy adoption. However, commercially available energy storage technologies present cost, performance, safety, and availability challenges in scaling to meet global demand.
Urban Electric Power (UEP) is addressing this need with its patented rechargeable alkaline battery technology. This battery transforms the traditional primary alkaline battery, trusted globally for use in homes and electronic devices, into a rechargeable battery for energy storage applications. The UEP battery combines unparalleled safety with strong performance while utilizing low-cost, earth-abundant raw materials. UEP batteries can be scaled into energy storage systems of multiple sizes and are compatible with commercially available power electronics. UEP is building a 60kWh energy storage system for testing at EPRI’s SolarTAC facility in Aurora, Colorado. This system is the UEP energy storage building block and will have performance indicative of larger-scale systems.
WexEnergy LLC (Rochester, NY)
Interior-mounted window insulation panel that keeps the heat inside during cold weather and outside during warm weather.
Project Description
Windows is the most porous component of the building envelope, and single-pane windows are the worst offenders. WexEnergy’s new Solar-Control WindowSkin is an interior-mounted window retrofit reducing energy loss of windows.
At a small fraction of the cost of window replacements, Solar Control WindowSkin adds a layer of insulation to existing windows and reduces solar heat gain. WindowSkin targets aging and underperforming windows that are 20+ years old and no longer as energy efficient as when first installed. TVA and EPRI are working with WexEnergy to demonstrate their new Solar-Control WindowSkin product in 20 disadvantaged/low-income homes in Tennessee to understand pre-installation requirements, installation best practices, customer satisfaction, and energy savings.
DEMANDQ (WALTHAM, MA)
Project Description
The project, between AEP and DemandQ, will demonstrate the company's demand optimization software and services in action at one of EPRI's buildings in Charlotte, N.C., to understand the technology's potential for reducing peak load and delivering seasonal, dispatchable peak demand curtailment services for C&I customers.
dryad networks (Berlin, germany)
Project Description
The company will work with Pacific Gas & Electric to demonstrate its Silvanet large scale IoT network solution for early wildfire detection in Northern California. The Silvanet network includes asset-mounted sensors, a mesh network utilizing LORAWAN for communications, and a cloud-based data analysis dashboard.
electric era (seattle, wa)
Project Description
The company will demonstrate its PowerNode ™ - 120 energy storage and software system for EV fast-charging with support from Central Hudson Gas & Electric and Xcel Energy at EPRI's laboratory in Knoxville, TN. The team will evaluate several fast-charging scenarios using a SK Signet fast charger and programmable load bank.
electricfish (Fremont, ca)
Project Description
ElectricFish, Ameren and EPRI will partner to demonstrate the value of ElectricFish's patented Community Resilience Score (CoReScore ™) within a defined geographical area in a utility's service territory. The outcome is to proactively identify areas which will become burdened with higher EV demand relative to grid capacity gaps, and climate/power outage risks.
enersion (San diego, ca & Toronto, canada)
Project Description
The company will be building a mobile solar-powered shipping container that provides cooling, hot water, and electricity. The energy cubed product will be fully off-grid, powered solely by solar panels with battery storage. It will be tested at EPRI's Knoxville, TN laboratory, then transferred to Con Edison in New York City where it will be evaluated for use as an off-grid disaster command center and for its energy efficiency properties. ElectroDunas, a distribution utility in Peru and a subsidiary of Grupo Energia Bogota, also will evaluate the project for potential application of the technology in it's service territory.
extensible energy (oakland, ca)
Project Description
The company will work with FortisBC to evaluate the potential of Extensible Energy's AI-driven software, DemandEX ™ , to help manage commercial building energy use and improve customer comfort in one of FortisBC's office locations in British Columbia.
krakenflex (manchester, UK)
Project Description
The company will demonstrate its hardware and software solution with Xcel Energy to explore the potential for real-time command, control and dispatch of distributed energy resources.
pingthings (El segundo, ca)
Project Description
Grupo Energia Bogota will investigate how PingThings' cloud-based platform can enable effortless analytics and the development of actionable insights from myriad sensor data. Over 12 weeks, EPRI, GEB & PingThings will test and verify the PingThings platform's ability to ingest and manage synchrophasor and SCADA data sets provided by GEB, to use the platform to explore the data and to analyze potential use cases.
proxxi (vancouver, bc)
Project Description
The company will demonstrate its voltage sensor wristband technology with Tennessee Valley Authority personnel who generally work around de-energized equipment to understand and document the technology's potential to help workers avoid near-miss situations.
renewell energy (houston, tx)
Project Description
This project will investigate the company's Gravity Well (abandoned well-to-energy storage) technology by assessing Renewell's pilot installation in Bakersfield, CA. EPRI's team will collect data and evaluate the characteristics of the technology in action, using the ESIC Energy Storage Test Manual and data submission guidelines as guides.
runwithit sYNTHETICS (eDMONTON, aLBERTA cANADA)
Project Description
The company will produce a simulation and corresponding visualization of to-be-determined grid event, that includes analysis and visualization of EPRI-sourced data, to provide insights of the potential impacts on people, businesses, community and region.
sensewaves (paris, france)
Project Description
The company will demonstrate its Adaptix.Grid solution with Grupo Energia Bogota and Southern California Edison to investigate the power of artificial intelligence to provide granular insights from sensor and time-series data to quanity material value that the solution may deliver.
singularity (somerville, ma)
Project Description
The company will be conducting four separate demonstrations of its real-time carbon intensity platform with Ameren, New York Power Authority, and Xcel Energy, to evaluate real-time carbon intensity information for electricity consumption in various use cases.
Vizi metering (seattle, wa; ann arbor, mi; sacramento, ca)
Project Description
The company will demonstrate its non-contact real power meter within an EPRI laboratory to investigate the solution's cost, simplicity, reliability and accuracy. Vizi looks to transform the built environment by making power metering and building health sensing so affordable and simple that it becomes ubiquitous.
Xerohome (rocklin, ca)
Project Description
The company will demonstrate its predictive energy modeling software to deliver building and data science insights for selected homes in a location in Ameren's service territory. The project seeks to investigate homeowner participation in utility residential energy upgrade programs to understand if XeroHome's automated process produces reliable results compared to the bespoke, traditional energy audit process requiring a professional home assessor.
EV Energy (Palo Alto, CA)
The company offers a wireless platform that optimizes electric vehicle charging to save customers money, fully utilize renewable energy, and deliver flexibility services to the grid.
GridFruit (Pittsburgh, PA)
GridFruit offers a grid-responsive compressor modulation to improve efficiency of commercial food service refrigeration.
IND Technology, Inc. (New York, NY)
The company’s technology detects electrical faults before they occur, which could prevent power losses, wildfires and other consequences.
Kognitiv Spark (Fredricton, NB)
Inventor of an augmented reality-enabled app to help utility workers learn new skills on the job.
LineVision (Somerville, MA)
LineVision provides a self-powered transmission line monitoring system equipped with integrated solar and battery power.
PingThings (El Segundo, CA)
PingThings offers an artificial intelligence platform that intakes, stores, and visualizes high-definition sensor data in real-time at grid scale.
Recurve (Mill Valley, CA)
Recurve’s software analyzes how buildings use energy and target resources by their potential to ramp energy use up or down in response to cost, carbon reduction, and other customer goals.
RWI Synthetics (Edmonton, AB)
RWI uses AI-enabled intelligence systems to model complex environments and human behavior, to help grid planners integrate distributed energy resources more effectively.
Sharc Energy Systems (Port Coquitlam, BC)
Sharc provides multifamily building wastewater heat recovery systems.
Switched Source (Vestal, NY)
An alum of the 2017 Ameren Accelerator, Switched Source has continued to develop its power electronics solutions to help manage distribution system load and improve power quality.
ARIO
The Ario product is a smart device application supported by web-based data management to provide the customer with an augmented reality visualization of their workplace. This allows for visual training, operations, maintenance and troubleshooting activities to take place at workplace sites and on real workplace machines and equipment. It also leverages data from other tools already used and can facilitate assistance from subject matter experts no matter where they are located.
Project Overview: Ario deployed a mobile augmented reality SaaS application at an AEP Ohio workplace site to provide users with quick access to information, drawings, data and remote assistance in field applications. With AEP, Ario developed remote interactive video chat with subject matter experts and created user interface to easily add/update equipment and information. Ario is exploring artificial intelligence (AI) opportunities and how AEP might be able to support and test new functionality being developed for the Ario platform
Founder Quote: ”Working with AEP and EPRI through the IluminationLAB has been an extremely valuable experience. It has allowed us to gain critical feedback in order to improve our platform and we look forward to an on-going relationship.” - Nate Fender, Co-Founder and COO
EIQ MOBILITY
eIQ Mobility is a company dedicated to simplifying and accelerating the electrification of fleets, enabling the transformation to zero-emission mobility through optimized planning, delivery and operation of electric mobility services at scale. eIQ Mobility is building a powerful data-driven awareness, decision and planning platform that harvests data from fleets, electric vehicle models, locations, facilities and utilities to solve fleet executive pain around continual planning for and electrification of their fleets.
Project Overview: eIQ Mobility has tested their EValuate tool using AEP fleet data, developing an AEP-hosted platform for a test pilot of fleet customers. This has enabled the creation of an AEP Operating Company deployment plan for electric vehicles, assessing the load implications and viability of a customer fleet deployment plan.
Founder Quote: ”For the Lab, our goal was to test the eIQ Mobility machine-learning EV fleet decision platform. To do that we collected data from 1,000 of their vehicles from 18 large operational hubs in five states. It’s been a very productive collaboration, with strong learnings for both parties. For eIQ Mobility, we learned about highly upfitted vehicles (typical for utilities), and improved our decision modeling with AEP’s feedback. We discovered 200+ vehicles that can be realistically electrified, with a lower total-cost-of-ownership which could save AEP millions of dollars over 10 years. We’re now discussing next steps which could include using our decision platform for AEP’s own customers, expanding the decision platform to all of AEP’s vehicles, and deploying actual EVs with the eIQ Mobility guaranteed EV price-per-mile contracts.” -Yann Kulp, Co-Founder and VP of Business Development
FREEWIRE
FreeWire delivers energy whenever and wherever it’s needed for reliable electrification beyond the electrical grid. With products such as the Mobi Gen, Mobi Charger and Boost, FreeWire leverages storage solutions to provide scalable, clean, power that moves to meet demand. FreeWire customers can tackle new applications and deploy new business models without the complexity of upgrading traditional energy infrastructure.
Project Overview: FreeWire’s Boost solution leverages battery storage to provide Level 3 EV charging capability on Level 2 charging infrastructure. The solution promises to lower the infrastructure costs of providing Level 3 charging, deploy such charging in more remote locations and help customers lower the peak demand charges that are can be associated with fast charging stations. For this demonstration, FreeWire is working with EPRI, AEP and TVA to compare the technical and economic performance of the Boost unit versus traditional Level 3 DC fast charging solutions. The project will commence once the Boost unit has completed UL testing.
Founder Quote: ”We’re grateful for the opportunity to be connected with leading utilities who are looking to expand their service offering by testing and deploying EV charging. Providing charging infrastructure is complicated - high installation costs, limited energy capacity, equitable access - obstacles we’re removing to speed up deployment and enabling the utility of the future.” - Arcady Sosinov, CEO
HYPERION
Hyperion has developed a proprietary technology that can digitize large physical high-voltage assets from a single optical fiber. This optical fiber is placed deep within a large high voltage asset covering the critical elements of the asset. From it, the customer is able to get temperature and strain information for every meter along the entire length of the fiber within the asset. A passive insulating component is stimulated using light - completely unaffected by the high electromagnetic fields generated and surrounding these large high voltage components. Once data is generated, the AI engine can track even the smallest changes in temperature and strain, providing valuable insights on asset health and system characteristics.
Project Overview: Over the course of the Lab, Hyperion focused on a small transformer application, building and testing a prototype by winding its fiber optic sensor technology into the transformer coil. In order to validate the accuracy and durability of the technology, heat run testing on the prototype coil was carried out at a high voltage test facility (Kinectrics) in Toronto under the supervision of EPRI. The results of the fiber measurements were compared to a number of thermocouples placed around the coil.
Founder Quote: ”Being part of the IlluminationLAB has allowed Hyperion’s leading-edge sensing technology access to live customer environments. Thus providing us with real-time, real-world validation for the Industry. The Hyperion team would like to thank AEP and ERPI for allowing our participation to this unique and innovative platform.” - Anselm Viswasam, President and CEO
LIVEEO
LiveEO has developed a solution that utilizes satellite imagery as a primary decision source for assessing and prioritizing vegetation management along the network, as well as an analysis and workflow tool that will enable greater efficiencies through predictive risk-based services versus traditional time-based services.
Project Overview: The combination of high-resolution satellite imagery and artificial intelligence allows LiveEO to inspect thousands of miles of lines, detect where vegetation threats exist on a utility’s grid and optimize the dispatch of service crews. In this demonstration, LiveEO and EPRI focus on comparing the results of satellite data analysis of a distribution grid sub-segment against the data from other inspection techniques to understand the accuracy and efficacy of detecting line threats and dispatching and tracking work progress.
Founder Quote: ”The LAB has been amazing for LiveEO. It helped us to get in contact with AEP, SRP, EPRI and a number of other great American utilities and gave the platform for exchange. With our product we want to serve customers all across the globe to maintain their assets more efficiently and effectively and within the IlluminationLAB we had the set up to kick start our American expansion and to prove our technology here. We are looking forward to future collaborations with EPRI, AEP and other utilities.” -Sven Przywarra, Co-Founder
STERBLUE
Sterblue is a drone software startup that has developed a cloud-based industrial platform to automate drone inspection for utility companies. It allows the user to upload the raw information about their infrastructures and generate 3D flight plans using geometrical parameters for guiding the drone along trajectories that wrap tightly around structures. The captured data is processed using artificial intelligence algorithms that automatically detect and characterize defects on industrial infrastructure.
Project Overview: Sterblue conducted three separate projects during the course of the Lab. They completed automatic inspections of; 29 Wind Turbines, 50 Transmission Towers, and one Cooling Tower. In one day Sterblue broke a record by inspecting 11 wind turbines (including the biggest turbines). These drone flights ran in order to demonstrate artificial Intelligence potential, to detect defects on infrastructure, to increase inspection productivity and to improve safety.
Founder Quote: ”The IlluminationLAB was awesome for Sterblue. After three years in Europe, we launched our US office in Los Angeles six months ago and this acceleration program was an amazing opportunity for us to build several strong credentials with the most innovative US utilities. Last but not least, AEP allowed us to roll-out a new application with our software and inspect a 300 ft. high cooling tower – huge excitement for our engineers!” - Geoffrey Vancassel, CEO