Nira Energy, a leader in transmission automation software, and Energize Capital, a leading climate-focused investment firm, announced a strategic partnership to scale Nira’s platform to meet rising operational demands of the transmission industry. With Energize’s help, Nira is building a new suite of software tools for transmission planning—equipping ISOs, utilities, and developers with advanced automation that enables one transmission planning engineer to do the work of ten and better keep up with today’s evolving grid.
As power demand grows and new energy technologies come online, interconnection requests are rising in both volume and complexity—driving significant delays and stalling the integration of new energy assets. More than 2,600 GW of clean energy capacity is stuck in interconnection queues—double the entire current U.S. installed capacity. As legacy tools and manual workflows fail to manage this crisis, transmission teams need faster, more scalable solutions. Nira’s platform is designed to meet that need—empowering planners to manage today’s grid demands and accelerate the deployment of revenue-driving projects.
“Transmission is the bottleneck of today’s energy economy – and transmission planning teams are under more pressure than ever,” said Chris Ariante, CEO and co-founder of Nira Energy. “Nira’s software helps transmission teams expand their in-house capacity and manage today’s growing volume and complexity with efficiency. Partnering with Energize is a huge milestone that allows us to expand faster, hire smarter, and bring our platform to an even broader set of stakeholders.”
Profitable since its founding in 2021, Nira’s platform is already used by more than 100 of the country’s largest solar, storage, and data center developers to reduce interconnection risk and optimize project portfolios. To date, the platform has supported over 500 GW of interconnection studies across all major U.S. power markets—both regulated and deregulated. By enabling faster and more reliable project analysis, Nira has helped users uncover over $3 billion in interconnection cost discrepancies, leading to significant cost savings.
“With energy demand rapidly growing, companies need every tool to move generation projects forward quickly and cost-effectively,” said Carlos Rodriguez, SVP Interconnection and Grid Analysis at Invenergy. “Nira’s grid intelligence tools help us make faster, more informed decisions about interconnection opportunities, accelerating our ability to deliver cleaner, more reliable, affordable energy.”
In response to growing demand from grid operators and transmission providers, this partnership will enable Nira to expand its platform to cover a broader set of planning use cases. In addition to interconnection planning, Nira is developing new tools for long-range reliability studies, scenario modeling, and transmission coordination, providing engineers with the automation and transparency needed to navigate an increasingly complex grid.
“In Energize’s conversations with leading developers, Nira consistently emerged as the go-to solution for transmission interconnection,” said Tyler Lancaster, Partner at Energize Capital. “After nearly a decade of research in this space, we’ve found that Nira has built the most differentiated platform for streamlining grid connection analysis. Their combination of deep ISO expertise and world-class software engineering enables practical, accurate tools that are moving the transmission industry forward.”
As part of the partnership, Energize’s Tyler Lancaster and Mark Tomasovic have joined Nira’s Board of Directors, bringing deep sector expertise and a powerful industry network to support Nira’s next phase of growth.
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