As utilities scramble to meet fast-growing U.S. power demand, a Norwegian tech startup says it has sensors and software that help increase existing transmission capacity by up to 40% to get more electricity to customers. And the company just lined up its biggest U.S. deal to date to prove it can deliver those kinds of gains.
Oslo-based Heimdall Power is supplying dozens of its bowling ball-size Neuron sensors, which it also calls “magic balls,” to Minnesota’s Great River Energy, a cooperative of 27 power companies that provide electricity to 1.7 million people and businesses in Minnesota, North Dakota and Wisconsin. A recently completed pilot project using Heimdall’s technology on Great River’s transmission lines resulted in a 43% increase in capacity, the companies said.
“The limiting factor of a powerline is the temperature of the line. Think about that as the speed limit,” Heimdall CEO Jørgen Festervoll told Forbes. “There’s a speed limit to how fast you can drive the power grid. Without the software and sensors, you’re basically driving without a speedometer.”
Because powerlines are critical infrastructure, utilities typically send less power through them than they can actually handle when they lack real-time data on the effects of weather and wind. Heat is particularly problematic as electrical resistance rises when lines grow hot. Sensors and monitoring software like Heimdall’s enable more power to be sent through without risking the line, Festervoll said. Neither he nor Great River provided financial details of the deal, which they said is the largest “dynamic line rating” project in the U.S.
Everything from booming U.S. manufacturing, growing sales of electric vehicles and the rapid increase in data centers for online shopping, streaming services, cryptocurrency mining and, increasingly, new uses of artificial intelligence, is pushing up electricity demand. The U.S. Energy Information Agency last month estimated power demand would rise 3% this year from 2023 and continue to grow in 2025. And while the cost of building more large-scale wind and solar power systems is declining, adding new lines to transmit all that power isn’t getting cheaper.
For example, the California Public Utilities Commission estimates the cost of installing new overhead powerlines is about $700,000 per mile. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law set aside $13 billion to upgrade the grid, but the cost of nationwide improvements is expected to run into the hundreds of billions of dollars over the next 20 years.
What makes Heimdall’s technology attractive to utilities is the ability to transmit more power without building new powerlines. This “will help us unlock grid congestion and achieve additional transmission capacity from our existing infrastructure,” Priti Patel, Great River’s vice president of transmission, said in a statement.
Festervoll thinks Heimdall’s advantage is being able to provide sensors — which it installs using drones — at a much lower cost than the small number of companies it competes with. Those sell for about $30,000, he said, citing a Bloomberg New Energy Finance report. “Based on third-party verifiable data on our competitors’ prices, we’re maybe 20% of the cost of the legacy players out there,” Festervoll said. He didn’t say how much the company charges for its line monitoring services.
Given that the cost of adding its sensors to existing lines is just “1% to 5%” of building new lines, Heimdall — named for the Norse god that could see and hear everything as he kept watch over Asgard — anticipates rapid growth in demand. “It is the most low-hanging fruit out there and it’s going to save ratepayers and economies billions,” he said.
