For those of you who recently attended the Forum, you may have seen us asking what topics you're interested in as we're planning out the second half of our 2021 calendar. This is because we know that your challenges and priorities as utilities are constantly changing based on what's happening in the industry and the world. For example, it would be inaccurate to say that vegetation management is a new topic of interest because publicly available data shows that US utilities alone spend six billion dollars, annually, on the monitoring and servicing of vegetation encroaching on-field assets. It's been an expensive challenge for a long time, but only after the 2020 wildfires did the topic become the massive priority that it is today.

Across our western coast, we saw nearly 20 billion dollars of damage occur in just 6 months as the fires tore across California, Oregon, Washington, and Colorado. This was the spark that drove vegetation management to be the most requested concierge request among our customer base. Frankly, the only thing matching the spike in interest has been the number of solutions that have entered the market over the past year. We're seeing numerous new innovators, as well as more mature innovators who've decided to develop specific solutions all pouring into the market in time for the summer of 2021. As a precursor to our Core Asset Innovation: Vegetation Management Forum on May 13th where LiveEO will be presenting on Satellite-Based Vegetation Management, I want to highlight a few companies that stood out during our diligence process.

See Storefront Here

Originally founded under the name as 20tree.ai, Overstory was built on the idea of offering data-driven vegetation intelligence to customers. While they’ve changed their name to be slightly “more conceptual”, trees are at the very heart of this company’s DNA. Specifically, they’re making a very strong bet on species detection technology – claiming that highly-accurate species detection is one of the overlooked key factors of effective wildfire prevention. I see this company as a standout among other solutions based on their strong AI team and their unique approach to working with diverse data sources. By creating a mesh from a high variety of very high spatial and temporal resolution satellite data sources, they’ve raised the bar in terms for real-time monitoring. Pale Blue Dot (climate-tech VC investing in startups building solutions that reduce or reverse or prepare us for climate change) who the startups $1.7 million seed round and Powerhouse Fund (clean-tech energy venture funded by Schneider, Google, Enel and others) who also participated both to think Overstory is on to something with their unique approach and focus.

See Storefront Here

Satelytics comes to us after making a name for themselves on the O&G side of energy, this company brings a level of operational efficiency found only in companies that have been around the block a few times. Founded in 2015, the company has developed several strong customers including BP (who also invested $5 million in 2020) and Duke Energy for their pixel processing abilities. Satelytics stand-out feature is the extent they’ve proven their solution, their engine’s ability to ingest and process massive volumes of data. To date the company has processed over 5.5 million miles of distribution lines in the US which we expect to see quickly increase due to their newly formed partnership with ACRT.

See Storefront Here As mentioned above, LiveEO will be our presenting innovator in our upcoming forum on vegetation management next week. What stands out about LiveEO and ultimately led to them being selected to present is the companies ability to maintain a healthy balance of innovative problem solving operational excellence. This has been done by building a strong team that's composed of both the technical horsepower to develop cutting-edge AI solutions and SMEs who have spent their careers working in and/or with utility companies. Beyond what they are building, the company has also developed strong partnerships which should not be overlooked. During the forum we'll be highlighting how LiveEO, in partnership with Intel, is pushing vegetation management to a new level.

If you’re interested in learning more about the landscape of innovators that are developing solutions to monitor and manage encroaching vegetation – I highly recommend attending the forum next week where we'll have Sven Przywarra, Founder and CEO at LiveEO, presenting an in-depth overview of the LiveEO solution and how, through a partnership wish Intel, they working to stop outages and fires due to encroachment.