Splight raises $12M to unlock the potential of renewable energy sources with AI

Grid operations startup Splight AI Inc. said today it has closed on a $12 million seed funding round to assist fuel its mission of scaling up access to scrub energy worldwide.

Today’s round was led by Noa, formerly A/O, and saw participation from a number of other enterprise capital firms, including Elewit, EDP Ventures, Draper Cygnus, Draper B1, Ascent Energy Ventures, Fen Ventures, Response Global, Barn Investments and the UC Berkeley Foundation.

Splight is aiming to bring AI into the world of electrical grid operations management, with a selected concentrate on solving the issue of grid congestion, or bottlenecks in energy supply. The startup explains that grid bottlenecks are defined as a shortage of transmission capability, and are often attributable to the energy industry’s reliance on outdated contingency management methods that may leave as much as half of the grid’s transmission capability unused. Unfortunately, these bottlenecks can lead to as much as 40% of all renewable energy generation being wasted, leaving 1000’s of gigawatts waiting in queues, unable to connect with the grid.

With governments and organizations the world over being more focused on sustainability, more efficient grid operations will probably be essential to reap the benefits of clean energy sources. Splight says that distributed energy sources reminiscent of batteries and rooftop solar have develop into more essential contributors to electricity grids, but energy providers struggle to administer these resources.

Splight desires to help energy providers get a greater grip on these renewable energy resources, and to achieve this it has developed a man-made intelligence-powered grid operations management platform that’s uniquely in a position to solve grid congestion. It does so using “inverter-based resources” or IBRs as a source of reliability. Its platform also helps to speed up the deployment of distributed energy sources.

The startup claims that its platform can unlock twice as much transmission capability by utilizing AI algorithms to tackle grid congestion, enabling terawatts of fresh energy to be injected into the grid while boosting reliability. Not only does it prevent clean energy from being wasted, but it might help to hurry up the pace at which recent distributed energy sources and batteries are connected to the grid.

Splight Chief Executive Fernando Llaver said today’s funding round is a big vote of confidence within the startup’s “proven and commercially viable” AI platform. “It may possibly be deployed fast enough to inject greater than 3,000 gigawatts of fresh energy inside months,” he said.

The startup intends to make use of the funds from today’s round to expand its platform into North America and the European Union. It should also speed up the event of its technology and grow its leadership teams.

Kia Nejad, an investor at Noa, said energy curtailment is one of the pressing challenges within the transition to more sustainable energy systems. “Splight’s technology is a way more practical approach for modernizing the energy grid to satisfy current demands,” he said.

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