Dynamic line rating deals have surged in recent years, following a parallel surge in demand for making most of the existing grid. The technology uses temperature and weather data to identify when the grid can handle a greater flow of electrons, clearing room on the wires for as much as 30% more electricity without building any new transmission infrastructure.
But the hardware alone is only part of the picture. The startup Splight promises to nearly double the space available on existing power lines with its “dynamic congestion management” system, or DCM.
Now Splight has secured a $12.4 million investment to fund its commercial expansion, Latitude Media has learned.
Splight’s DCM software “introduces an entirely new layer of grid reliability by ingesting real-time data and using a proprietary machine-learning algorithm to turn” what it calls “fast-responding assets” such as batteries or data centers “into a source of added robustness for the system.” The company said its technology can “consistently unlock up to 100% more transmission capacity on existing infrastructure.”
“It is dynamically testing the grid every millisecond,” Splight CEO Fernando Llaver told Latitude. “For us, DLR could be a very good feature of a DCM, but it’s not a finished product. To actually deliver more transmission projects, you have to have the capability to control things.”
Since launching four years ago, the San Francisco-based company’s order book has at least doubled, if not tripled, each year. Its operations initially mostly centered in Latin America, Spain, and Portugal, though Splight has also deployed its technology at a small scale on Texas and Midwestern grids in the U.S.
“That kind of real-life experience is really impressive and hard to find at this seed stage,” said Carolin Funk, a partner at the venture capital firm Blue Bear Capital, which led the latest fundraising round. “What Splight is really showing is doing more with less.”
Part of what attracted Funk’s firm to Splight was that its software didn’t require equipping power lines with new sensors to read temperatures. “A lot of DLR solutions need sensors and more hardware installed,” she said. “We looked at those, then we came across Splight.”
This concern about the limits of hardware-based solutions to grid congestion is gaining traction. It’s also the theory behind Gridraven, a startup using AI to make grid upgrades without spending money to install sensors along power lines. That company, which has recently moved its headquarters from Estonia to the U.S., uses AI and weather forecasting to make hourly calculations of how much power can safely travel at times when transmission lines tend to be overloaded.
“DLR technology with the potential to truly revolutionize our grid looks fundamentally different from sensor-based versions that have struggled to scale,” Gridraven CEO Georg Rute wrote in an opinion piece in Latitude Media in May. “The real breakthrough isn’t about adding more hardware; it’s about eliminating it entirely.”
Splight’s work, however, uses a completely different mechanism: more a control mechanism, than a way of better monitoring the grid.
The Splight deal, which provides the funding through a so-called simple agreement for future equity contract, will fund the expansion of the company’s North American and European offices.
“We have a unique offering, and this investment means we can now focus on scaling it from a commercial perspective while we’re ahead of the market,” Llaver said. “We’re still alone in this market.”
