Tim Barratt loved being a lineman for an electric company in Australia, where he grew up, even amid the chaos of the 2009 Black Saturday brushfires. That burned more than 1 million acres and left many without power or homes. But when he moved to the US in 2013, his wife was less enthusiastic about him continuing down that path.
“My wife doesn't want me to work at high voltage anymore for safety reasons,” Barat told TechCrunch.
so he Went back to schoolHe eventually earned a master's degree in electrical engineering from UC Berkeley.
But he just couldn't stop thinking about power lines. Or rather, listening to them.
“As humans, we cannot feel electricity. We can feel it. We can be electrocuted,” said Barat. However, none of these are suitable for a long career. So instead, electric company linemen use their other senses to get a handle on what's happening during an outage.
“Generally, we're looking, we're listening. We're experiencing transformers vibrating differently, things like that. We hit a pole with a hammer and listen to how it sounds to know if it is hollow before climbing it for safety reasons.
It is a laborious and time-consuming process. Utility workers often have to travel dozens of miles to find the source of an outage, whether it's a tree branch resting on a wire, a squirrel that got fried while grounding a line, or a line blown down by high winds. Only once they report the nature of the problem and the exact location can the repair work begin.
“Some utilities spend nine figures per year just on these patrols,” Barat said.
There had to be a better way, Barat thought, and as he reflected on his experience as a lineman, he recalled the times he spent listening to various bits of infrastructure. “That's where my mind went,” he said.
Together with Abdul Rahman bin Omar and Hall Chen, founded Barat Gridware. The company's product is a device that literally listens for electrical problems.
“We think of the grid as a giant guitar as opposed to a circuit board,” Barat said. “It's a physical thing. We need to monitor not only the voltage and current, but also the physical properties of the grid.”
Wires, poles, and transformers make different noises depending on whether they hit tree limbs, hit cars, or are hit by wind. Gridwire sensors, which are mounted on poles just below the line, are not connected to the wires themselves. Instead they're waiting for mechanical distractions — noise and vibration — that the company's AI and signal processing software have been trained to identify as various hazards on the grid.
Processing happens on each device, and when the software identifies a potential problem, it sends the details and location to the cloud via a cellular or satellite connection (or, if the signal is weak, to another device to relay the message). The entire box is about the size of an iPad, and is powered by solar panels, with its base angled to allow the panels to face the sun. Because they do not touch power lines or require a separate power source, the devices are quickly installed: power lines can be live and each box takes less than 15 minutes to mount and enable.
Barat said Gridwire was cash flow positive last year, but he thought it was still a good time to raise money. Gridwire recently closed a $26.4 million Series A round led by Sequoia, the company exclusively told TechCrunch. Existing investors Convective Capital, Fifty Years, LowerCarbon Capital and True Capital participated. “This increase was remarkably simple in that we didn't need it,” he said.
Gridwire currently monitors more than 1,000 miles of power lines for 18 companies from devices on 10,000 poles. The company previously worked with PG&E and ConEd to ensure the devices accurately report problems in the field.
But before Barat climbs the utility pole, he has to prove to himself that Gridwire's devices work.
“I made my own grid,” he said. “It's full size, 55-foot poles, 200-foot span and I spent years destroying it in every way, shape and form. I've seen a lot of people see how I blow up transformers, knock down trees on power lines, cut live power lines with bolt cutters—really do a lot of risky work to simulate those events.”
How did his wife feel about it? “I was in trouble,” he said, but added, “It's behind us because we're getting three to four cases a day in the real world.”