Rhizome Launches Wildfire Risk Mitigation Product and Receives Investment from Convective Capital
2024年7月17日 - 10:00PM
Rhizome, the world’s only climate resilience planning platform for
the power grid, announced today a $1 million investment from
Convective Capital alongside the launch of gridFirm (Fire Ignition
Reduction and Mitigation), a groundbreaking product to help
utilities manage their wildfire risk. Convective Capital is a
venture capital firm funding startups building innovative
technology to address the global wildfire crisis. The partnership
reflects the growing demand for Rhizome’s technology following
their pre-seed raise from earlier this fall.
gridFIRM is available for all electric utilities in the U.S.,
Canada, and Australia, and is designed to help electric utilities
integrate wildfire risk in utility planning and allow for more
effective development of wildfire mitigation plans. This will be
the first standardized approach to quantifying long-term risk of
utility assets causing wildfires and optimizing investments to most
cost-effectively mitigate those risks. gridFIRM builds on top of
Rhizome’s AI-based platform to model extreme weather-related grid
failures currently being deployed with leading utilities.
“Wildfires are not just a western U.S. issue, they’re occurring
across the nation and more frequently than ever,” said Rhizome
co-founder and CEO Mishal Thadani. “Now, with new forecasts
predicting a hotter-than-usual summer across much of the U.S.,
addressing wildfire concerns has become a priority. It is critical
for utilities to be able to quantify the risk of igniting wildfires
and what cost-effective measures can move the needle to prevent
disasters and save lives. Convective Capital has a keen
understanding of the challenge and our vision for addressing it,
and we are thankful that they chose to partner with us.”
Utility-caused wildfires are devastating for communities and
present the largest risk to the health of the electric utility
industry. Over the last five years, investor-owned utility credit
downgrades have outpaced upgrades as wildfire risk increases.
gridFIRM will bridge the gap by helping utilities more effectively
deploy capital to address the existential concern.
“U.S. utilities invest $200 billion in their infrastructure
every year in an environment increasingly impacted by climate
change,” said Bill Clerico, Founder and Managing Partner at
Convective Capital. “In particular, wildfire ignitions have become
an existential risk, causing bankruptcies, fines, and regulatory
actions and costing the industry over $100 billion in the last 10
years. We're excited that Rhizome's new product gridFIRM is now
available as a much-needed new tool for utilities, and our
investment will help the company grow even faster and build a safer
and more reliable grid.”
By applying machine learning to a host of asset, geographic, and
historical datasets, the platform enables granular insight to
vulnerability on an asset-level, providing an unprecedented level
of visibility to the likelihood a utility asset could ignite a
wildfire. The product was developed based on feedback from
Rhizome’s utility customers in the Northeast, Pacific Northwest,
and Texas.
“gridFIRM evaluates specific wildfire risk mitigation tactics
utilities are commonly considering,” said Rhizome co-founder and
CTO, Rahul Dubey. “The tool is specifically built to help utilities
assess the effectiveness of investments such as insulating bare
conductors, undergrounding, replacing aging assets, deploying
reclosers, and others.”
About RhizomeRhizome is an AI-powered software
platform that helps utilities identify vulnerabilities from climate
threats, quantify risk at high resolutions, and measure the
economic and social benefits of grid-enhancing investments. Rhizome
provides the highest standard of equitable climate risk mitigation
to ensure that communities and businesses are protected against
intensifying extreme weather events.
Media ContactFischTank
PRrhizome@fischtankpr.com