Celebrating the First Birthday for Omega Grid
It has been about a year since I sat down with our co-founder, Dr. Massimo Di Pierro and he agreed to help build Omega Grid. I am extremely proud of the work that the team has accomplished and I’m excited to think of what is in store for us in the coming months.
Every startup rollercoaster has their share of ups-and-downs. Every week has had a significant positive event and in retrospect, every month has a milestone that keeps us energized and charging forward (electricity pun intended).
March 2017
Dr. Massimo DiPierro joins us as CTO and is able to begin coding the backend of a simple energy market. We held our initial customer discovery meetings with our friends at EDF, MISO, Madison Gas & Electric, IESO, and CAISO. John Wambaugh agrees to join as our first advisor.
April 2017
We were selected as a finalist to the CLT Joules energy accelerator. This was an early sign of industry interest in blockchain technology. We started early conversations with potential metering and hardware partners. After politely declining a few times, we finally welcomed Seyi Fabode as an advisor.
May 2017
In May we got introduced to Jennifer O'Rourke of the Illinois Blockchain Initiative. Separately, we had a call with Craig Wooster and Jorge Elizondo of the Stone Edge Farm Microgrid (where we would later test our software). I reached out to Dr. Lynne Kiesling after reading her definitive writings on transactive energy. Despite her busy schedule, she agreed to join as an advisor.
June 2017
In June, we met on site with our friends from EDF Innovation and the Stone Edge Farm team to plot out how we would test our software using the Heila Technologies microgrid controllers in Sonoma, CA. We were notified by Brian Dixon from Capital Innovators that we were a finalist for the Ameren Accelerator and we hit the road for St. Louis to present to the F500 utility.
We were also invited by the DCD Energy Smart team to participate in a panel with Duke, EPRI, Switch, Schneider Electric, Consumers Energy and Quebec Hydro.
July 2017
In July, we were notified that we were selected to join the Ameren Accelerator along with 6 other energy focused startups. We began our weekly meetings with the executives and engineers from Ameren, our mentor, and the Capital Innovators team that were instrumental in helping form who we are today.
August 2017
Thanks to the investment from Ameren, we were able to add Casey Schroeder on as our lead developer. Intending to capture the effects of the solar eclipse, the team worked hard with Heila to get the Stone Edge Farm project live on August, 21, 2017. We brought on another former student of Massimo’s, Lewis Thompson, a former co-worker of mine, Dan Kinsella, and an incredibly lucky Angellist find of a designer, Yvette Solorzano.
September 2017
In September, we had the honor of being invited to present at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) in Palo Alto, CA. SLAC is a US Department of Energy National Laboratory operated by Stanford University. Keith Grassi, former General Electric VP of Grid Modernization, agreed to join Omega Grid.
October 2017
October was even busier, we invited some of the team from PG&E to tour the winery. At NY REV:Connect, we forged new relationships with National Grid and Iberdrola. We were invited by Zpryme to speak in Austin at their ETS:Start event.
Last but not least, at the culmination of the Ameren Accelerator, we announced that Omega Grid had entered into an agreement with Ameren to conduct the first ever distribution level blockchain transactive energy project.
November 2017
Omega Grid was asked to testify alongside Exelon’s Lev Goldberg to members of the Illinois State legislature at the Illinois Blockchain Initiative meeting. Jules Besnainou invited us to be a featured speaker at a panel alongside Shell Ventures at the Cleantech Group Energy Blockchain Executive Summit in Boston.
December 2017
Normally, December is a pretty slow month in the utility business. Not in the blockchain energy business! We hosted an executive team from E.On in Sonoma. We were invited to join Accel-VT with another group of startups in support of a climate economy initiative in Burlington, VT. Accel-VT was hosted by the Burlington Electric Department, Joseph Henry Steig taught the Village Capital curriculum with support from the VT Sustainable Jobs Fund. Somehow, we were able to make integration progress with our hardware partner on the Ameren project.
January 2018
SolarPlaza featured Omega Grid alongside Indigo Advisory on their european focused Blockchain2business webinar. We brought the team together for planning out the next customer facing effort (stay tuned for more news on this release). Continuing our trend of speaking to lawmakers, the VT Sustainable Jobs fund asked us to speak to members of the Vermont legislature about attracting climate positive jobs to their state.
At DistribuTECH we hosted an innovation dinner with the architects of the two most advanced microgrids in the country (Stone Edge Farm and the Ameren TAC). We had a number of calls with analysts and were invited to speak at the Greentech Media and Indigo Advisory events this March in NY.
We were notified by @LaunchAlaska that we were selected for investment and are headed to Anchorage! Somehow, we still found time to host Iberdrola and EDF in Sonoma.
February 2018
We finished up a great three weeks with the Accel-VT cohort by working closely with the innovative team and leadership at the Burlington Electric Department. Together, we co-created and submitted a funding proposal for “Using Dynamic Blockchain Market Incentives to Reduce Capacity and Energy Costs for Utilities”.
Finally, we made the trip to NYC for the UFL Pitch Day and made lots of new friends who we hope to see again next week!
What do you want to see Omega Grid accomplish before our second birthday?
