Surging electricity demand is spurring construction of new power plants and transmission lines. But one of the fastest ways to make more power available is to better manage the already-built capacity and find ways to tap into the vast amounts of energy wasted on existing infrastructure.
Now Gridraven, a startup that uses artificial-intelligence software to make those grid upgrades without the costly effort of installing sensors along power lines, is debuting its technology on its biggest stage yet.
The smart-grid software maker has inked a deal to deploy its dynamic line rating technology across Finland’s national grid.
On Tuesday, the company — which recently relocated its headquarters from the Estonian capital of Tallinn to Austin, Texas, as part of a planned U.S. expansion — announced that it won a public tender from Fingrid, Finland’s national transmission system operator, to work on five transmission lines totaling 700 kilometers, or more than 430 miles.
It’s just the first phase. Once the software is verified to work as planned on the initial five lines, the contract gives Gridraven a deadline to extend its coverage over the other 66 lines that make up Finland’s national grid by the end of the year.
“Fingrid is a big operator in Europe, and this is showing the way for innovation and where the technology is heading,” Georg Rute, Gridraven’s chief executive, told Latitude Media. “What Fingrid does, others usually copy.”
The deal is the biggest deployment of Gridraven’s technology yet, and comes less than a year after the company carried out a pilot project with Elering, Estonia’s grid operator, where Rute previously worked.
Traditionally, transmission lines limit the flow of electricity to volumes that work for a constant, set baseline of weather conditions. That restricts how much power can transmit along lines even when temperature, wind and precipitation pose no threat.
To get around this, Gridraven’s software uses artificial intelligence and weather forecasting to make hourly calculations of how much power can safely travel at those precise times — and does so without the need for sensors placed along the infrastructure.
As a result, grids using Gridraven’s technology can operate closer to their physical limits, adding what the company said was up to 30% more power every year to the existing grid capacity and freeing up more space to connect renewables to the system without constructing new lines.
“Because the solution is fully software-based and requires no physical installations,” said Mikko Piironen, unit manager at Fingrid, “it allows us to scale” across the entire network.
“This project marks an important step in modernizing grid operations and helps maximize the use of existing infrastructure instead of building new lines,” he said in a statement.
Last year, utility giant National Grid launched the largest dynamic line rating test in the U.S. on its grid in Syracuse, New York.
Earlier this year, Gridraven netted a venture deal worth more than $4.5 million to fund a U.S. expansion. As part of the agreement, Rute plans to move to Austin later this year, where a growing backlog of wind and solar projects seeking grid connections and the stinging memory of the catastrophic grid collapse amid 2021’s Winter Storm Uri make Texas an appealing market.
The company expects to announce its first major U.S. projects by autumn, Rute told Latitude.
He said the Trump administration’s rollback of policies to support renewables shouldn’t affect the timeline.
“I’m an optimistic person,” he said. “The American electrical industry will continue growing as rapidly as it has in the last few years, so this will accelerate. I don’t think about the political winds too much.”
