What makes SMRTGrid the perfect monitoring solution for your industrial sector? Why should you invest? Here are some answers to questions you might have below.
SMRTGrid’s primary focus is a Utility System that monitors and reports on all fault conditions on Utility Grid distribution lines and poles – from the condition of the poles to voltage and amperage in the conductors. All so you can save $ millions in O&M costs.
Outage Detection Purpose-Built For Utilities
save money
Use SMRTGrid
Utilities all across the US waste millions every year scrambling to fix hard-to-locate outages using aging tech and non-granular fault indicators. Line-workers waste hours finding simple problems that could ultimately be fixed in minutes. The few existing monitoring solutions use broad-brush outage identification and outdated communication methods—decreasing speed and effectiveness.
SMRTGrid removes costly outage location guesswork and significantly cuts outage response times. Leverage our Internet of Things tech to more efficiently manage the distribution poles on your power grid.
SMRTGrid's Services
Utilities are our primary market, as described in the first box below. However, we also have the capability to address a range of other applications with our sensor arrays and IIoT technology. Utilities, plus four other areas of application development are below.
FAQs
Our initial and primary market focus is bring intelligence and advanced- and highly granular IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things) monitoring of utility distribution grids.
Our utility industry contacts, including our pilot project companies, have targeted a 10% to 15% savings on their operations and management budget Our most current data estimates that a medium-sized municipal utility might expect to save $10 million to $15 million dollars a year on their O&M spending, making their ROI an easy calculation.
Every SMRTGrid power line sensor is mounted directly below the Minimum Approachable Distance, or MAD Zone, on every other distribution pole on problem sections of your grid. Every sensor will take one utility worker, one utility bucket lift, two lag bolts, and five minutes to install after the bucket truck is set and operating.
Our pilot programs have shown that the average crew can install between 30 and 40 sensors in a single day of routine grid maintenance. Utilities typically integrate SMRTGrid Line Beacon installation into their grid maintenance or upgrade schedules.
A faulted circuit indicator (FCI), or fault indicator, gives broad indications of where a fault in your grid occurs. Our Line Beacons give you the exact, pinpoint GPS location, a Google Earth view of that location, the time, and probable cause of every outage on your grid. Unlike FCIs, our Line Beacons also continue operating when the power's off, and for up to 96 hours if the pole they are on goes down. In contrast, FCIs will only communicate with your command center if power is running through your lines. When a blackout occurs, fault indicators will be unable to function—leaving your crews in the dark. SMRTGrid sensors will continue to communicate their pole's exact location and condition while the power is off.
SMRTGrid’s grid monitoring system is calibrated and algorithm-driven. So, over time, as it "intelligently learns" your grid, it can start doing predictive legwork for you and your team. Once we establish performance parameters, we can accurately predict potential power outages based on your area’s historical and environmental data.
So, the longer our sensors are installed on your grid, the more accurate our power-outage- and maintenance requirement predictions become.
Your System Average Interruption Duration Index (SAIDI) and System Average Interruption Frequency Index (SAIFI) are crucial factors for gauging operations and capital-requirement expenses. And they can figure into Public Utility Commission rate increase requests. SMRTGrid combines instant fault detection, live-location reporting, and maintenance warnings to help you improve both metrics dramatically.
SMRTGrid has an ongoing development and deployment partnership with Verizon and we are in discussions for distribution partnerships as well.
The US maintains a slowly growing system of 159 million+ utility poles. Many of these poles are rural, and they need constant maintenance from crews that are often understaffed. This presents SMRTGrid with a sizable potential market and a great business investment opportunity. Independent financial experts who work in Silicon Valley on startups and M&A have placed a realistic SMRTGrid revenue to reach $350 million in three years, and topping $1 billion annually in five years (US only). Those estimates are based on factored analysis -- early adopters only, a target percentage of any utility's grid covered.
Strategically placed SMRTGrid wildfire sensor arrays (in development and testing) use a multi-step verification process to confirm the presence of wildfire near a power grid. After a positive confirmation, SMRTGrid’s wildfire IIoT platform automatically communicates data back to your local communication hubs and incident command centers. Finally, SMRTGrid wildfire sensors will predict potential spread direction and velocity using highly localized environmental and weather data.
SMRTgrid's line beacon has been fully certified to operate in the public domain.
- Issued
FCC Grant of Equipment Authorization.
- Certified by Verizon Labs GSMA.
- Holds an IP 67 durability certification. IP 67 stands for ingress protection rated at a level 6 amount of dust and a 7 amount of water. Level 6 dust is the highest possible rating that a communications device can have, and level 7 water protection is the second-highest level of water protection. So, your SMRTGrid device will be unaffected by the worst dust storms and will last for at least 30 minutes of submersion in 1 meter of water—more exposure than any sensor is likely to see during its lifetime.
- Tamper Proof enclosure.
- Data Encryption.
About SMRTGrid
SMRTGrid has been developing the first purpose-built, full-service power grid map monitoring system since 2017. Over our four years of development, we've gone through pilot testing, the IP 67 certification process, the Verizon Certification & the FCC certification process, and real-world testing with a major utility company.
When you become a SMRTGrid client, you buy into a company that provides you with a highly intelligent grid monitoring and alerting solution that reduces costs and saves human resources. Let us use our new technology to save your power company $millions in grid maintenance and restoration costs.
SMRTGrid also isn't entirely focused on power lines and poles. We're actively developing technology for first responders, fire detection, agriculture, and oil/gas production. We're also developing technology for weather and data management fields. Each of these new technologies is entering serious testing and will become technologically mature enough to deploy soon. If you would like to invest or start a pilot program, please reach out!
The SMRTGrid team is well equipped to meet the goals we've set. Our leadership represents almost a century of collective experience in software, management, entrepreneurship, investment, tech consulting, software tech consulting, marketing, and engineering team management and development.
Brian Brandt, CEO, and founder has spent his career in high tech, from Microsoft launch teams, over 100 venture backed startups, and work in technology commercialization for Fortune 500 companies. Our CTO, Jamie Hale, has run $billion manufacturing operations and managed dozens of engineering teams. Tom Vaughn, CFO, is a 40 year veteran of investment banking and finance. Dave Martin, COO, has decades of experience in product management and publicly traded companies.
Together, the four principals of SMRTGrid and the hardware and software engineering teams are positioned perfectly to help you solve a range of monitoring and response challenges using the latest IIoT technology.
Investor Relations
Why Make SMRTGrid Your Next Investment?
When you back SMRTGrid, you're not backing a promise—you’re backing a reality.
Our IIoT communication platform is ready and real world tested, and we are in revenue. And the utility industry is highly focused on adding our kind of grid intelligence to the grid. Invest in a company that has meticulously invested in with real-world, rigorous testing and partnerships with industry-leading companies like Verizon. SMRTGrid is primed to help utilities significantly reduce costs, quickly recover from catastrophic grid failures, and manage natural disaster recoveries more effectively.
When you back SMRTGrid, you're backing a business investment opportunity that provides a proven solution to a billion-dollar problem.
THE MARKET IS LARGE
There are 159 million+ utility distribution poles across the US, many of them more than 40 years old. The total available market is in excess of $60 billion. Our highly factored revenue estimates (reviewed by some of Silicon Valley's top financial analysts and CFOs) has us on a revenue trajectory hitting $1 billion in 5 years.
We're Primed to Innovate
Utilities Are Motivated to Upgrade
- The utility industry is under pressure from PUCs and investors alike to cut O&M costs and upgrade the level of intelligence on their aging grids.
- PUCs in some states such as Indianan are offering grid modernization subsidies that could almost completely offset the cost of our system.
- Improved monitoring represents significant reductions in maintenance and liability insurance costs.
Our Customers Have Money They Need to Spend
The US Government has mandated rural improvements to power grids. Our customers already have money put aside.
SMRTGrid's potential Return on Investment (ROI)
During the development phase of SMRTGrid, we took great care when estimating our ROI and profitability. We gathered budget and technology adoption curve information on every power utility within the continental United States. Our ROI numbers for utilities are based on in-person interviews with the technology adoption decision makers at multiple utilities.
$1B Potential in Five Years From 20% of Early Adopter Power Grids
$20B Early Adopter Sales Potential
$60B TAM Market Potential
If our early adopter market segment purchases SMRTGrid sensors for just 20% of the poles on their power grid, SMRTGrid will realistically pass $1 billion sales in in five years. If SMRTGrid reaches 100% adoption on early investor poles, we'll pass $20 billion. If SMRTGrid achieves full adoption across the United States, you'll have invested in a $60+ billion business.
We believe that the earning potential from just one of SMRTGrid’s verticals makes us an easy choice for looking for the next big thing. It won't be a "10 to 1 in three years" holy grail investment, but it's based on rock solid tech, and an industry headed strongly in our direction.
Reach Out
The SMRTGrid team is ready to help you improve the outage detection and response you rely on to maintain your power grid’s infrastructure and to improve critical funding metrics like SAIDI and SAIFI. Please reach out if you would like to invest in our mission or if you would like to start a pilot program for your utility.
Please also tell us who sent you to SMRTGrid! The more we know about how potential customers find us, the better we can serve utilities in every community.
Phone
1.406.570.8502Location
3361 Lemhi Trail Drive
Bozeman, MT 59718
Bozeman, MT 59718