This start-up wants to help cities make the most of green energy without all the high cost
November 3, 2025
This tech company wants to help cities make the most of available green energy for less
By automating some operations and increasing the capacity for renewable energy, Switched Source offers cities a less expensive way to upgrade their existing power distribution grids.
This article is part of a series sharing the stories of startups developing innovative solutions to environmental challenges and how they are pushing their business forward even as the Trump Administration champions fossil fuels and slashes funding for green projects. Read all the stories here.
The cost of updating aging power grids to work well with new available green energy sources has long been a hurdle for many cash-strapped municipalities, but one start-up says its technology can help cities make smarter use of their grids — and for far less than a pricey overhaul.
Switched Source’s technology offers a less expensive fix for cities boosting their use of green energy — places that are moving from fuel oil to electric heat, for example, or that need more capacity for residents charging electric vehicles.
WATCH HEREHere’s how it works: the technology automates the operation of power distribution grids and increases the capacity for renewable energy — and it comes in a relatively small 5-by-10-foot sea green box that sits on the ground. By making the most of the existing infrastructure, it can substitute for an expensive re-haul of a distribution circuit.
“So instead of doing a $3 million, $5 million upgrade of a distribution circuit, you can put this device out there and it will give you an extra 20% of load serving capacity,” said one of the company’s co-founders, Charles Murray.
Electric poles typically carry three wires, but usually only large commercial customers with air conditioners, pumps, large motors and other heavy equipment need all three. Most residential customers tap into only one. The challenge for a utility is to maintain a balance and ensure capacity is not underused because of how pockets of electrical load have developed.
That’s where Switched Source’s technology comes in.
U.S. & World
“It acts like a traffic cop for the electrons and just says, ‘Hey, it’s best if you go down with this wire. No, you go down this wire.’ And it’s balancing out the system,” Murray said. “It’s dynamically telling those electrons where to go.”
Switched Source also works to reconfigure a grid, after a storm for example, that leaves customers without power. It can rebalance customers across the wires and bring them back online faster without overloading the grid, he said.
Utilities in the Southeast are eager for tools to help them recover from hurricanes, which are intensifying more quickly as a result of climate change.
“Hurricanes throughout the Southeast are not going anywhere,” Murray said. “Utilities want to be high performers when it comes to keeping the lights on for their customers.”
Funding a green tech idea
Murray and his cofounder, Lane Nelson, are both graduates of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and were named finalists of the school’s New Venture Challenge, a program to help early stage businesses.
Improving the country’s electrical grid is necessary no matter the source of the power, said Steven Kaplan, the faculty director at the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, which runs the New Venture Challenge.
“That’s a good in a green world, it’s good in a fossil fuel world,” Kaplan said. “It’s just good and you need to do it.”
The New Venture Challenge, which gives out prize money as investments to the finalists, launched Grubhub, Simple Mills and Braintree, which bought Venmo. Of Switched Source, Kaplan said. “They’ve taken awhile but they’ve got some tailwinds and now we’ll see how they end up doing.”
Start-ups typically face a time horizon of five to 10 years, so if they have technology that seems attractive, he would advise that they go ahead. For companies focused on technology, particular green technology, the government funding probably matters somewhat, he said.
The way the federal government is currently slashing subsidies and funding for environmentally focused projects can make an impact even on outside investment, though, he said.
“The venture funding will react to what’s being subsidized and what’s not, so that makes sense that they’re pausing to see what actually comes out,” he said. “That’s the negative news. The positive news is some of these things just make sense no matter what. Those I assume will get funded.”
Murray said that with President Donald Trump in office, the company expects to be more focused at the federal level on reliability and resiliency, as opposed to decarbonization and renewable energy.
Switched Source formed just before Trump won his first election and had won a $8.56 million SCALEUP grant from the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency. The program supports what it calls transformative technologies that risk being stranded before reaching the market.
Switched Source also received $500,000 from the Department of Energy, which recognized the company as one of nine accelerating American manufacturing of advanced energy infrastructure, and an award from the department’s Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnerships, which is funding grid reliability and resiliency improvements in communities in Florida.
Its technology has now been installed in New York, Iowa, Florida and Alaska and it has established a manufacturing facility in Chicago.
Switched Source also participated in Scale for ClimateTech, a program funded by New York State Energy Research and Development Authority that helps companies bring their products to market. It trains companies to manufacture their products while working to bring jobs to the state, and advance New York’s climate goals.
The state is aiming to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 85% below 1990 levels by 2050 and achieve 100% zero-emissions electricity by 2040. Start-ups had raised $431 million in capital and earned $40 million in revenue over four years, according to a 2023 impact report.
In New York City, the program is administered by SecondMuse, which is dedicated to market-driven solutions that will help companies grow in a global climate tech market that could cost $275 trillion to transition to net-zero transmissions.
Search
RECENT PRESS RELEASES
Related Post
