Grid operations startup Splight AI Inc. said today it has closed on a $12 million seed funding round to help fuel its mission of scaling up access to clean energy worldwide.

Today’s round was led by Noa, formerly A/O, and saw participation from a host of other venture capital firms, including Elewit, EDP Ventures, Draper Cygnus, Draper B1, Ascent Energy Ventures, Fen Ventures, Reaction Global, Barn Investments and the UC Berkeley Foundation.

Splight is aiming to bring AI into the world of electrical grid operations management, with a particular focus on solving the problem of grid congestion, or bottlenecks in energy supply. The startup explains that grid bottlenecks are defined as a shortage of transmission capacity, and are usually caused by the energy industry’s reliance on outdated contingency management methods that can leave up to half of the grid’s transmission capacity unused. Unfortunately, these bottlenecks can result in up to 40% of all renewable energy generation being wasted, leaving thousands of gigawatts waiting in queues, unable to connect to the grid.

With governments and organizations across the world being more focused on sustainability, more efficient grid operations will be essential to take advantage of clean energy sources. Splight says that distributed energy sources such as batteries and rooftop solar have become more important contributors to electricity grids, but energy providers struggle to manage these resources.

Splight wants to help energy providers get a better grip on these renewable energy resources, and to do so it has developed an artificial intelligence-powered grid operations management platform that’s uniquely able to solve grid congestion. It does so using “inverter-based resources” or IBRs as a source of reliability. Its platform also helps to accelerate the deployment of distributed energy sources.

The startup claims that its platform can unlock twice as much transmission capacity by using AI algorithms to tackle grid congestion, enabling terawatts of clean energy to be injected into the grid while boosting reliability. Not only does it prevent clean energy from being wasted, but it can help to speed up the pace at which new distributed energy sources and batteries are connected to the grid.

Splight Chief Executive Fernando Llaver said today’s funding round is a huge vote of confidence in the startup’s “proven and commercially viable” AI platform. “It can be deployed fast enough to inject more than 3,000 gigawatts of clean energy within months,” he said.

The startup intends to use the funds from today’s round to expand its platform into North America and the European Union. It will also accelerate the development of its technology and grow its leadership teams.

Kia Nejad, an investor at Noa, said energy curtailment is one of the most pressing challenges in the transition to more sustainable energy systems. “Splight’s technology is a far more practical approach for modernizing the energy grid to meet current demands,” he said.

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