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National Grid Partners

The Strategic Infrastructure business unit was launched last year to help accelerate the development of large-scale infrastructure projects, and Gilytics offered an attractive solution to a major problem. Traditionally, expanding energy networks and developing new routes for power lines is a very slow endeavor. Design work is often done manually, and it can be difficult to explain to communities and other stakeholders why power lines must follow a certain geographic path. To solve this challenge, Gilytics developed a tool called Pathfinder, which uses data to quickly assess project parameters and determine the best line routes.

Accelerating the Green Energy Transition with Gilytics

When it comes to the transition to wind, solar, and other forms of clean energy, the stakes are extremely high—and speed is key. Scientists and world leaders generally agree that to limit the global average temperature rise to 1.5°C, we must cut carbon dioxide emissions roughly in half by 2030 and reach net zero by 2050. To meet those goals, energy companies need to move swiftly.

“The UK government has set some pretty aggressive targets around hitting net zero,” said Liam Sonner, product line director for National Grid’s Strategic Infrastructure business unit in the United Kingdom. “If we aren’t able to make our processes slicker and deliver these huge projects faster, we’re not going to hit those.”

As the energy transition company, National Grid is working hard to find innovative ways of decarbonizing the energy system. That means upgrading the electricity grid so it can carry more clean energy; supporting and connecting to more offshore wind farms; and partnering with startups that can leverage data and technology to help solve today’s pressing challenges.

National Grid Partners plays an essential role in this effort. National Grid Partners' business development team introduces hundreds of startups to National Grid business units—whether or not they have a financial stake in those companies.

“We are able to bring the best and brightest startups to National Grid that they otherwise wouldn’t know about, and we can do this at pace,” said Luke Wainwright, director of business development at National Grid Partners. 

“It's all about time and efficiency for us, without cutting corners. Gilytics stood up really quickly, and at a much more reasonable cost compared to other companies in this space.”

National Grid Partners can facilitate connections quickly and find the right partners across National Grid who can benefit from these new technologies. “We can help a startup go from an intro meeting to working with us in days rather than weeks, which is not a common thing in a big corporation -- and particularly in a highly regulated utility,” Wainwright said. “That’s the power of this process.”

This is exactly what happened with Gilytics, a Swiss company working to automate infrastructure design and accelerate the clean energy transition through smarter planning processes. National Grid Partners introduced Gilytics to the Strategic Infrastructure team, and they quickly launched a pilot project together. The entire process took just two weeks.

“We provide information to developers, engineers, and planners, which allows them to quantitatively justify the reasons why certain areas must be excluded from an energy network, and why some others are more suitable. This helps increase transparency among all stakeholders affected by the project.”

 The Pathfinder tool is a collaborative environment where multiple stakeholders can work in parallel. It can be customized depending on boundary conditions, compliance regulations, and other criteria. And it’s extremely fast, with potential solutions generated in seconds. Notably, the tool does not rely on machine learning, which might make Pathfinder’s recommended routes harder to explain.

“Machine learning is a gray box,” said Grassi. “But with a deterministic approach, you can explain step-by-step why you got certain results. That gives you more credibility and makes it easier to guide conversations with the stakeholders involved in a project’s approval process. That’s the key point that drove the design of the architecture.”

Digital tools like this are at the heart of how National Grid will meet its net zero goals. Without a solution like Pathfinder, it would likely take years to manually plan out essential infrastructure projects. With support from Gilytics, however, National Grid is able to bring that time frame down to months, even weeks. “It's all about time and efficiency for us, without cutting corners,” said Sonner. “Gilytics stood up really quickly, and at a much more reasonable cost compared to other companies in this space. The solution’s really easy to use, and the service we received from Gilytics was second-to-none.”

Going forward, National Grid Partners will continue to seek out innovative startups like Gilytics that can collaborate with National Grid business units and accelerate the green energy transition.

“The longer we take to change to fully renewable technology, the greater the impacts of global warming will be,” said Sonner. “So that’s the difference tools like this can genuinely make.”