Tamra Reynolds: For this month’s Power Plays podcast, we are virtually revisiting the NRECA TechAdvantage Expo floor in Nashville. For this trip, we will take you inside NRECA’s Startup Alley pitch competition, where new and emerging technology companies showcase innovative products aimed at helping electric cooperatives achieve their goals of reliability and affordability.
Teri Viswanath: Fourteen startup companies with innovative products aimed at electric cooperatives, rapid-fire demos on the floor of NRECA’s TechAdvantage, and one big question: What will help co-ops improve reliability, strengthen resilience, and serve members better without adding to operational complexity or straining an already overstrained workforce?
Hello, I’m Teri Viswanath, and I’m joined by my CoBank colleague, Tamra Reynolds, along with two other special guest hosts for this podcast, the NRECA leaders who helped shape Startup Alley at this year’s TechAdvantage. That’s no other than Lidija Sekaric and Venkat Banunarayanan. Welcome to Power Plays.
Lidija Sekaric: It’s great to be here, Teri and Tamra. Startup Alley is about translating innovation into practical value for co-ops — solutions that can be piloted, proven, and then scaled in rural environments.
Venkat Banunarayanan: You’ll hear everything from autonomous drones and grid sensors to Wi-Fi risk tools and secure DER communications. We group the startups into three themes and bring you a few CEO voices from the flow.
Reynolds: Coming up, first, the tools that help co-ops see the grid, above it, around it, and in real-time.
Viswanath: Our first segment of the show is about field intelligence. That’s technologies that help co-ops inspect assets, detect hazards, and prioritize work. In Startup Alley, that theme showed up in companies like Pitch Aeronautics, FlyX Technologies, Gridware Technology, Inc., and Remote Intelligence Solutions.
Banunarayanan: Co-ops are being asked to do more with the same or fewer resources. The fastest wins are knowing what to fix first and proving it out with data. In an environment where co-ops are faced with rising costs, technology investments must align with meaningful process improvements. One of our competition winners enables this by making better, more granular information available about what is happening on co-op lines rather than relying on generalized forecasts that might not represent the on-the-ground operating reality. Here is Ian Gibson with Pitch Aeronautics.
Ian Gibson: I’m Ian Gibson. I’m the co-founder of Pitch Aeronautics. Before working at Pitch, I spent a number of years in the Air Force as an acquisition officer. That experience was really formative for me. It gave me a really deep appreciation for how much weather really affects complex operations. Utilities are really no different. Most people don’t realize this, but utilities are among the most weather-sensitive organizations in the world. Weather affects everything they do, from how much energy they can safely transmit through power lines to wildfire risk, with wind being the leading driver of utility-ignited wildfires. Most utilities, including most co-ops, are reliant on national weather forecasts that were really never designed for the scale or the geographic complexity that they operate in.
Those high-level weather forecasts really miss the localized weather data and patterns that actually matter on the ground. That’s where we fit in. At Pitch, we use drones to deploy weather stations directly onto energized power lines. We take that data and we feed it into machine learning models to deliver better weather predictions that are actually tailored for utility use cases. This allows operators and planners to make more confident decisions, whether that’s responding to a wildfire threat or managing reliability across thousands of miles of line.
Reynolds: The part that stood out to me is the operational cadence. Co-ops don’t need another dashboard. They need decisions that can translate into a work order, a patrol route, or a switching plan.
Sekaric: Exactly, Tamra. The strongest pitches from our inaugural competition, which will now be an annual competition, connected the technology to co-op workflows – such as OMS, GIS inspection programs, vegetation management, and showed how a pilot would run in a rural utility footprint.
Viswanath: We also saw complementary approaches. FlyX Technologies brought an aerial perspective for inspection and mapping. Gridware Technology Inc. focused on detecting grid disturbances and early indicators of failure. Remote Intelligence Solutions emphasized getting the right information to the crews fast.
Reynolds: Venkat, when co-op executives made their way to the back of the hall and visited Startup Alley, what questions were you hoping they’d ask the competitors?
Banunarayanan: I’d put these in four buckets. One, how the technology helps the co-op achieve the dual mission of affordability and reliability. Two, on a practical level, how the product showcased on the floor integrates with systems they already run. Three, what sort of changes are in store for line workers, dispatchers, or the co-op’s IT department on day one? And four, what sort of efforts will be involved to deploy this product at scale within your co-op, and does it represent bottom-line value for the co-op’s membership?
Sekaric: Building on Venkat’s points, it’s crucial that any new technology not only fits seamlessly into the co-op’s existing workflow but that it also addresses real-world challenges that are faced by crews and IT teams. For our members, integration isn’t just about software; it’s about how information flows from the field to dispatch, and then how it translates into actionable steps that improve reliability and affordability.
Reynolds: Scene two of our three-part Startup Alley discussion revolves around resilience — tools that help co-ops anticipate problems and harden the grid. Here, we’re grouping Firescape, Delphire, Gridient, Bellwether, and Solitude Labs as examples of startups tackling risk, reliability, and planning, but from very different angles.
Sekaric: Most of your listeners probably are aware that rural system topology is very diverse. We’re talking about mountains and forests, plains, coastal areas. And so resilience is never only one thing; it is a portfolio that they have to build. And what we’re hoping is that NRECA Startup Alley is a place to compare approaches and to ask: Does this reduce outages for membership? Does it reduce risk exposure for the co-op, or reduce the cost of getting to the next level of reliability?
Next up is Holly Eagleston, a former Sandia National Lab scientist, and the founder of Firescape.
Holly Eagleston: Co-ops are typically in really high-risk areas for wildfires, particularly across the Western U.S., although we’re seeing that changing with recent fires that have happened in Georgia and Florida. What they’re doing with our software is helping determine when they should be doing different protection settings across their system so they can prevent that ignition from ever occurring.
Our software is taking in all of this weather information. We’re running wildfire spread simulations to look at ignition likelihood, spread likelihood, and consequence. Then, hour by hour, we can tell them what feeder should be on which protection setting. That could be fast trip, it could be non-reclose, it could even be public safety power shutoff as a last resort. And what that setting does is it helps prevent an ignition from starting. Co-ops will typically do that setting on more of a seasonal rotation. When the fire season starts, they might put their whole system into non-reclose, but that brings down their reliability. Their customers and their members are going to be getting more outages as a result. With Firescape’s granular data and information around wildfire risk, they can really balance safety and reliability by only using those settings when they really need to. And then, using it can prevent ignitions from starting.
Viswanath: That tomorrow morning test is key. If a model can’t change a decision, it’s not resilience, it’s reporting.
Banunarayanan: During events, co-ops need confidence in the data and the communications chain. It’s not enough to predict risk. You need to route crews, coordinate mutual aid, and keep members informed with consistent, defensible information. Rather than simply mapping wildfire risk, Firescape promises to be an operational decision tool that translates complex data into concrete mitigation actions.
Reynolds: Other teams in this theme approach resilience with analytics and operational planning tools. Delphire, Gridient, Bellwether, and Solitude Labs each talked about turning utility data into clearer prioritization, where to invest, where to inspect, and where risk is changing over time.
Viswanath: Lidija and Venkat, serving as one of your four judges for this competition, I was genuinely impressed, not just by the wide range of technology products and services on display, but also by the variety of backgrounds and personalities amongst the founders. The next person you’re going to hear from is candid about being the youngest founder in the room. For context, I used to practice law at a prominent Silicon Valley law firm and listened to countless startup pitches over the years, but what really stood out to me in Solitude Labs CEO’s presentation was his genuine enthusiasm for the technology and his unwavering commitment to customer needs. It was really a breath of fresh air.
James Wolf: Yes, Teri. Thanks for having me on the program. I’m super stoked to be here. To really kick it off, as we heard from Venkat, co-ops are really being asked to do more with the same or fewer resources. Let me tackle this from where I’m sitting. As we know, co-ops run lean by design, they’re covering big territories with small teams, and that’s worked for decades because you only invest in things that truly matter for our members and reliability. And the problem in cybersecurity is that the world keeps adding complexity faster than your staffing and your teams and resources can keep up. Whether that be every new AMI system, DER project, new vendor remote access solution, they all come with their own box, portals, and rule sets.
Complexity is the enemy of security because it multiplies the ways a small misconfiguration or one mispatch can turn into an incident. That’s especially true when your team is already stretched thin. From Solitude’s perspective, that’s really the gap we’re focused on. We’ve built a zero-trust security platform for OT that’s designed to reduce complexity for co-ops. So instead of a patchwork of VPNs, jump servers, and one-off firewall exceptions for every project, we create a single secure overlay that sits on top of the networks and devices you already have, and we enforce simple, consistent policies at the edge about who can talk to what, about what, and under which conditions. What does this mean in practice? It means that your teams manage one system and one platform instead of juggling all of these different turnkey, plug-and-play, additional complex overlays that exist.
Viswanath: Lidija, when co-ops evaluate resilience analytics, what are the red flags you see?
Sekaric: There are definitely quantitative measures that can be applied, but I think there’s also a number of common-sense rules: avoiding big promises with no pilot plan, black box results that can’t be explained to the co-op leadership or the board, and tools that assume perfect data. The best teams will acknowledge messy realities, those of different GIS maturity, different inspection cadences, and they’ll demonstrate how they handle the gaps without creating more work. Venkat mentioned earlier that co-op resources can be quite lean, and this includes co-op staff that’s available for implementation of these new solutions.
Viswanath: That’s really helpful. What was fascinating for me about Startup Alley is that not all of the companies represented at this event were looking to make immediate sales. In fact, there are a few that simply focused on finding the right co-op to partner with so that their promising technology could make it through the pilot phase of development. Lidija, the unique nature of co-op governance sets up for a very different procurement process, right?
Sekaric: That’s correct. The next voice you will hear is Ari Brown, the founder of Bellwether, and his ask from the Startup Alley was to find the right partners to help get his promising technology onto a pilot and then a commercial pathway.
Ari Brown: Bellwether gets its start from my background as a submariner. I was a submariner for eight years in the U.S. Navy. What that means is I was the lead supervisor for a small modular reactor on board a submarine. Then the other half of that experience is driving the boat, which is based on acoustics and sonar. What you do is you have 10,000 microphones that you use to make sense of the world around you. I get to combine those as I direct that attention towards a terrestrial electric grid.
One of the things that I learned from being a submariner is that everything breaks down eventually. These repairs can happen in either an uncontrolled circumstance or a controlled circumstance. Wouldn’t you rather be the one to choose?
Bellwether does transformer monitoring, and this is part of a nascent field that’s coming around. What makes us unique is that we do acoustics. One of the best parts about acoustics is the form factor. This all works from just your smartphone. You hold it up to a transformer, you take a 60-second recording, and you’re done. You can upload it to the cloud, track progressing issues on individual transformers, and you can quickly see which transformers in your fleet are doing the work.
We use acoustics to also listen to all parts of the system at once: high voltage, low voltage, and the internal magnetic flux that’s otherwise canceled out. We can tell you a couple of things. We can tell you KVA loading. We can tell you the winding health. We can tell you the core health, such as instances of delamination. We can tell you if there’s partial discharge, and we can tell you if there’s phase imbalance. As demand grows, co-ops are finding that they have to replace something, but they can’t replace everything. Which transformers do you replace first? How do you get the most bang for your buck when it comes to these investments? Bellwether Canary can identify the weakest links in ways that you can only otherwise detect through invasive procedures. Our app is inexpensive and easy to use, and can give a co-op a multi-year heads-up that one of the transformers is beginning to rapidly deteriorate.
One example is when a co-op buys a refurbished transformer, our app verifies that the windings and core are in good shape, ensuring that they’re not getting a lemon. You know, traditional CTs and PTs for measuring current and voltage, those cost $30,000 apiece, which means instrumenting a single transformer can cost $100,000 to $200,000. With Bellwether Canary, you can get a snapshot of a transformer’s loading and its health for 1% of that price. Not everyone has the budget in either the funding or the time to install a lot of new equipment. This is the antidote to that. This gets you 95% of the answer for 1% of the cost.
Reynolds: All right. You can see the grid, and you can assess risk. Our third theme is about what’s happening on the other side of the meter and at the edge: DERs, cybersecurity, and the data layer that makes modern programs work.
Viswanath: The segment you’re going to hear is about the edge. It’s about DER programs, member-facing intelligence, and security. In Startup Alley, that included HomeBoost, DER Security Corporation, Derapi, Voltaire, and rGen Consulting.
Banunarayanan: Co-ops are seeing new loads and new devices, electric vehicles, heat pumps, batteries, and smart appliances. Managing those well requires trusted data and secure control paths. The edge is where reliability and member experience meet.
Sekaric: Whenever you’re talking about member data, co-ops also need clear governance in the sphere of privacy, consent, and transparent communications. And in that way, the programs will build trust instead of friction.
Reynolds: There’s an enablement layer, too. Teams like Voltaire and rGen Consulting that help co-ops turn strategy into execution, whether that’s program design, operational change management, or making data usable across departments.
Viswanath: Before we wrap, let’s talk about what it takes to win one of these pitch competitions. Venkat, there were a number of screening criteria that you developed for us so that we could assess the product offerings. Can you walk our audience through these and then maybe tell us what made for a good pitch?
Banunarayanan: Some evaluation criteria were straightforward, such as the technology’s maturity and whether the company could be a reliable, collaborative partner. In addition, we considered factors unique to co-ops, starting with how well the company understood what it takes to work with an electric cooperative. The strongest pitches clearly explained the co-op use case, were upfront about what’s needed for a pilot, and defined measurable outcomes like time savings, fewer outages, or reduced risk.
Viswanath: As a judge, this was not an easy competition. Ultimately, the scoring showed that the startup HomeBoost had high marks in all of the categories that were developed. The founder of HomeBoost, Selina Tobaccowala, has a unique backstory. Selina had already built and scaled several major consumer technology companies. She co-founded Evite as a Stanford undergraduate and later in senior product and engineering roles, she took on at Ticketmaster, for example. Her most formative leadership role was at SurveyMonkey. That experience, which is listening to users at scale and translating raw data into clear, actionable insights, is becoming a defining influence on her work, which we saw show up with HomeBoost. Here’s Selina.
Selina Tobaccowala: Hi, Teri. Thank you so much for having me on. HomeBoost is an AI-powered home energy assessment that gives guidance for bill savings and comfort improvements. Your members have probably seen a ton of virtual assessments, a video call with a remote auditor, but at HomeBoost, we believe that understanding the building envelope is key. With HomeBoost DIY, we send the consumer a kit with a thermal camera and a blacklight. This consumer then scans their homes in about 30 to 45 minutes, combining the knowledge they know about their home.
My daughter’s room is cold, with the information we know that garage ceilings are often a problem. Then we use AI and computer vision to transform that collected data into a personalized step-by-step video for the homeowner. We’re now developing an intelligent agent that guides and advocates for them through each upgrade. Our customers love it. We have an NPS of over 57, and feedback like, “We finally have answers.”
Our HomeBoost Pro product is for energy advisors on staff. We have the same easy-to-use interface, and it allows each energy advisor to capture consistent inputs on every home, and yet we still generate our awesome homeowner video that walks them through exactly what needs to happen. We are seeing over 87% of homeowners take action, whether it’s caulking a window or calling in a weatherization contractor to update their attic insulation.
Sekaric: From all of us here, congratulations to this year’s pitch competition winners, HomeBoost and Pitch Aeronautics. Their solutions stood out for connecting innovation to co-op realities, and fast.
Reynolds: That’s our walkthrough of NRECA’s Startup Alley competition, where new tools met real-world co-op challenges.
Viswanath: And a huge thanks to Lidija and Venkat for joining us and championing this terrific new tech advantage offering. And to all the startups who brought their best ideas to rural electric co-ops: We are better for the collaborative opportunities that you bring to the table for our co-ops.
Reynolds: If you want more conversations like this, follow Power Plays on your favorite podcast app. For show notes, links, and more co-op tech coverage, check your conference resources and NRECA updates.
Viswanath: Goodbye for now.
