Grid-edge technology company Utilidata has established domestic manufacturing for its Nvidia-powered smart grid chips in the heartland of the USA.

The Rhode Island company has announced a manufacturing partnership with Michigan-based Brooks Utility Products, a maker of electric metering related products for over 150 years. Utilidata is also opening nearby an innovation lab where research and development for its smart grid chips will take place.

The partnership will bring the product to full commercialisation in 2023 with assembly, testing and use of its meter socket adapter. Commercial-scale production will begin this spring to meet utility customer demand. Current utility customers using Utilidata’s smart grid chips include Portland General Electric and Lake Placid Municipal Power.

“Brooks is excited to work with Utilidata to bring new technology and innovation to the electric utility market,” said Robert Kiessling, Brooks Utility Products national marketing manager. “The grid needs technologies like the smart grid chip to become cleaner, more resilient and decentralised. Coupling Utilidata’s innovative platform and smart chip technology with Brooks’ focus on safe and reliable products provides the optimal solution for a dynamically changing electrical grid.”

Utilidata’s innovation lab is in the Northern Brewery building in Ann Arbor, and serves as the company’s centre of excellence for rapid prototyping and design. The facility is intended to build upon the company’s work with Ann Arbor-based Endectra, a University of Michigan spinout that prototyped the first several generations of the smart grid chip. Utilidata will harness talent from the University of Michigan and other local institutions as it begins to recruit for several immediate high-tech engineering jobs at its lab in Ann Arbor.

“One of the biggest challenges electric utilities face is managing the rapid adoption of electric transportation, so there is no better place to be innovating than in Michigan at the intersection of the electric transportation, manufacturing and clean energy industries,” said Josh Brumberger, Utilidata CEO. “The state of Michigan’s recent investments in technology innovation and workforce development combined with the research and talent of the University of Michigan and other local institutions made Ann Arbor a clear choice.”

Utilidata’s smart grid chip is a distributed artificial intelligence (AI) platform that enhances resiliency of the electric grid, integrates distributed energy resources (DERs) — including solar, storage and electric vehicles (EVs) — and accelerates the transition to a decarbonised grid.

The platform, which is powered by Nvidia’s accelerated computing and AI technology, collects and analyses large amounts of granular data at the edge of the grid to provide utility distribution companies with enhanced visibility to integrate more clean energy seamlessly while reducing power outages and enabling quicker storm recovery.