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Past Projects

2021

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

2020

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.
Sizzle Reel

Demo Day Presentation

Lunch & Learn

Lunch & Learn Presentation Slides

2020 IEL Final Report

GridFruit (Pittsburgh, PA) – GridFruit offers a grid-responsive compressor modulation to improve efficiency of commercial food service refrigeration.
Sizzle Reel

Demo Day Presentation

Lunch & Learn

Lunch & Learn Presentation Slides

2020 IEL Final Report

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.
Sizzle Reel

Lunch & Learn

Lunch & Learn Presentation Slides

Demo Day Presentation

2020 IEL Final Report

Kognitiv Spark (Fredricton, NB) – Inventor of an augmented reality-enabled app to help utility workers learn new skills on the job.
Sizzle Reel

Demo Day Presentation

Lunch & Learn

2020 IEL Final Report

LineVision (Somerville, MA) – LineVision provides a self-powered transmission line monitoring system equipped with integrated solar and battery power.
Sizzle Reel

Demo Day Presentation

2020 IEL Final Report

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.
Sizzle Reel

Demo Day Presentation

Lunch & Learn

Lunch & Learn Presentation Slides

2020 IEL Final Report

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.
Sizzle Reel

Demo Day Presentation

Lunch & Learn

Lunch & Learn Presentation Slides

2020 IEL Final Report

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.
Sizzle Reel

Demo Day Presentation

Lunch & Learn 

Lunch & Learn Presentation Slides 

2020 IEL Final Report

Sharc Energy Systems (Port Coquitlam, BC) – Sharc provides multifamily building wastewater heat recovery systems.
Sizzle Reel

Demo Day Presentation

Lunch & Learn

Lunch & Learn Presentation Slides

2020 IEL Final Report

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.
Sizzle Reel

Demo Day Presentation

2020 IEL Final Report

2019

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.

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. 

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. 

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.

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. 

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.