Portland General Electric Partners with Vancouver’s Expeto to Accelerate Renewable Energy Outcomes

Vancouver’s Expeto is partnering with energy company Portland General Electric (PGE) to accelerate grid modernization and renewable energy outcomes.

Founded in 2015, Expeto is known for its cloud-based NeXtworking platform, which solves mobile complexity for enterprises by making any kind of mobile connectivity a seamless part of a privately managed network.

PGE’s mandated decarbonization targets include an 80% decrease in greenhouse gas emissions associated with serving Oregon retail electricity consumers, compared to its baseline emissions levels by 2030​.

The Expeto-enabled PGE private wireless network will support automated grid resiliency, monitoring of field conditions with smart sensors and devices, connected workers for enhanced employee safety and charging stations for electric vehicles on the public grid. This transformation will improve grid resilience and outage recovery times for the benefit of all PGE customers.

PGE selected Expeto to provide next-gen connectivity based on successful deployment in the Connected Utility Lab, which confirmed viability of PGE’s use cases over one year of extensive testing.

“We had a choice between dedicating a large capital outlay on a new network that would take many years to build or immediately growing our business through renewables and grid applications as part of a more cost-effective option,” said Ananth Sundaram, Senior Manager Grid Asset Engineering at PGE.

“Expeto put sophisticated use cases within reach, like having a private network experience over public connectivity anywhere we need it. The company’s enterprise first approach has resulted in a strategy that gives us confidence our network connectivity is reliable and secure, freeing us to focus on accelerating the transition to a clean, reliable and equitable energy future.”

Last month Expeto announced a $12 million funding round to advance and scale its offering. The Series B capital investment was led by Sorenson Capital and included existing investors Evok Innovations, Lavrock Ventures, and Mistral Venture Partners