Reforestation Company Deep Dive: Buzz Solutions
As the world gets hotter, wildfires are erupting across the globe. The Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service of the EU found that burning forests released a record-setting 1.3 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide in just the month of July 2021, mainly in North America and Siberia.
We highlighted wildfire prevention in our tropical reforestation article and got to talk to Vikhyat Chaudhry, the founder of Buzz Solutions, an AI startup that detects power grid flaws and wildfire dangers faster than humans. Their unique platform analyzes millions of images of power lines and towers from drones, helicopters, and aircraft to find dangerous faults and overgrown vegetation, in and around the grid infrastructure, helping utilities repair problem areas before a fire starts. Buzz Solutions is working with New York Power Authority, having discussions with PG&E, and is in conversations with many other utilities. They have national coverage, from Texas to Newfoundland and California to New York, and international clients now as well.
Vikhyat’s Story
Vikhyat graduated from Stanford University, earning a Masters focused on energy and clean energy engineering. He discovered the idea for Buzz Solutions and met his co-founder in the Ventures for the Real Economy class. After winning an ARPA-E and TomKat grant, he was able to launch the startup post-graduation with Start-X.
Key Takeaways
Utilities have a business case to address wildfires. They suffer ~$170B in losses due to natural disasters; PG&E recently paid $55M for two wildfires this year!
There are policy tailwinds in this space. Mandatory inspections used to be every 6 months - now they're required every month.
Hardware such as drones are commoditized solutions in the wildfire prevention space; utilities are even starting in-house teams. Vikhyat needed to pivot away from hardware to a software/AI solution to bring customer value.
If utilities want to build AI in-house, they need to aggregate a diverse dataset for different geographies. Buzz Solution offers ease of integration and off-the-shelf AI models for utilities to use.
They are hiring across multiple roles in sales, project managers, customer success managers, computer vision engineers, and software engineers. More here!
Q&A
What role does Buzz Solutions play in combating climate change?
Grid infrastructure is the backbone of the economy. Buzz Solutions is continuously monitoring the grid and helping keep it safe. As more renewable energy comes online (especially distributed) alongside electric vehicles, there’s a lot of strain on the infrastructure, increasing the risk of wildfires and the need for monitoring.
How does the team describe and quantify the emission impact of wildfire prevention?
We focus on preventing wildfires, so it is tricky to measure. Every time the utility replaces dangerous components found by Buzz Solutions, we quantify the wildfire risk in that area and the square footage that would have been impacted by a wildfire occurring.
It seems complicated to develop a sustainable business model for wildfires since it's seasonal, concentrated in specific regions, and infrequent. What were the key challenges in developing the business model?
Wildfire prevention is just one ROI. Buzz Solutions also provides a reduction in the amount of time (typically months) needed to analyze the millions of images. Our business model is a subscription service model. In terms of challenges, utilities are an interesting customer to work with. It can take long sales cycles to land a customer, so you need to partner with the right people to accelerate the cycle. You also need to meet customer requirements for every utility, including highly accurate measurements, strong partnerships with internal SMEs, and data vendor integrations.
If wildfires are so costly to the utilities, why do you think utilities have not tried to work with AI vendors themselves to automate their business processes?
Utilities have traditionally been slow movers. Their operating model is different from other enterprise companies since they base many decisions on CAPEX. It is tough for utilities to build AI in-house since they would need to aggregate a diverse dataset themselves. Drones are more commoditized today, so they have more data than they know how to deal with.
Other public sector stakeholders, like fire fighting stations, could benefit from the wildfire detection insights as well. How is Buzz Solutions thinking about granting access to data for public benefit?
There are a number of organizations that are working to help CalFire prevent wildfires. Buzz Solutions helps predict hotspots for where authorities should focus preventative work. Enabling data access is an important topic for the company. Energy commissions and insurance companies have also approached us for access to their data.
How does Buzz Solution fit within the larger ecosystem of players in the wildfire prevention space? What makes Buzz Solution different?
There’s no one solution that solves everything. There are a lot of partnerships and collaborations between organizations across this space. Other competitors include large organizations like GE, Siemens, and Hitachi in their asset management solutions and startups such as Precision Hawk and E-Smart Systems.
Buzz Solutions differentiates itself with technology. We aim to lead the market in AI accuracy and the ease of data integrations we provide to the utilities. Buzz Solution is definitely niche. There are other generalist vendors that trade-off with accuracy; false negatives are a large area of focus.
What is the vision of the company? What’s next?
The company’s vision is to protect the world’s energy infrastructure. Power infrastructure is a huge market, but there have been a lot of requests for utility-scale renewable facility management as well.
What kind of talent is Buzz Solutions recruiting for?
We are recruiting across the board! Sales development reps, project managers, customer success managers, computer vision, and software developers. Please see here for more opportunities.
What gives you hope for the climate crisis?
The climate crisis is here and impacting people globally. We all have to solve this collectively - the more broad involvement we see, the better. The accelerating interest and engagement are what give me hope. Policy will drive a lot of things. Getting AI analytics, storage, DERs, microgrids, and other climate technologies up to speed will be key. VC funding for climate technology is more emphasized today. It’s been great to see software entrepreneurs getting into the climate tech space.