MENLO PARK — National Grid Partners, the corporate venture capital arm of the National Grid utility company, has surpassed $500 million deployed since its founding in 2018 to improve the aging power grid and accelerate the utility industry into the next era. The group also reported that nearly 80% of its portfolio companies have strategically engaged with National Grid’s businesses units, validating its mission to bring startup innovation to utility scale.
“Utilities face a new era of operational challenges–from the electrification of everything and the integration of low-cost renewables to the widespread deployment of artificial intelligence,” said Steve Smith, president of National Grid Partners and chief strategy and regulation officer at National Grid. “We’ve built National Grid Partners to not only fund the most promising startups addressing these challenges, but also to make a real impact on our business and across the industry. Moreover, our investments attract further momentum, with our $500 million having unlocked $3 billion in follow-on funding for our portfolio companies.”
National Grid supplies power to more than 20 million people in New York and Massachusetts, serves as the electricity transmission provider to all of England and Wales, and owns and operates the U.K.’s largest electricity distribution network. The utility has directly engaged with more than 30 National Grid Partners portfolio companies, including:
- AiDash, which unites satellite data with artificial intelligence (AI) and helps utilities identify in real time hotspots that should be prioritized for hazardous tree removal. National Grid has seen outages drop by 30% in jurisdictions where AiDash has been deployed.
- LineVision, which provides real-time transmission line data to help utilities better assess how much electricity their lines can carry at any given time. This improved data enables more than 30% more energy to pass through existing infrastructure. The startup’s technology was fully deployed across National Grid transmission lines in western New York this year and is now integrated in the utility’s control room–the largest such deployment in the United States.
- Risilience, a climate intelligence platform that helps businesses assess climate risk and turn that data into actionable insights to speed net zero progress. The startup showed National Grid Electric Transmission how to save £3.5 million in operating expenses for its U.K. electric vehicle fleet while reducing scope one emissions by 57,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide.
National Grid Partners was founded to help utilities overcome traditional struggles to internalize innovation and more closely collaborate with startups. In a recent survey, just 26% of utility innovation leaders said they turned to startups for fresh thinking, relying instead on their own employees for ideas. Moreover, these executives reported that just one in four innovation projects in planning ever gets implemented (24%). The survey data was announced at the recent NextGrid Alliance Summit, hosted by National Grid Partners to bring together startups and leaders from more than 120 global utilities to foster collaboration and innovative solutions.
“The innovation companies National Grid Partners supports are essential to enable the energy transition,” said John Pettigrew, CEO of National Grid Group. “By making collaboration an organizational priority and dedicating time and resources against our mission, we are demonstrating that startups and utilities can team to make a singular impact on how we do business. Building on this progress is essential to build the utility of the future.”
