SAN MATEO, Calif. and HONOLULU, Oct. 15, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Jupiter, the leading provider of predictive data and analytics for climate risk, today announced an agreement with the Hawaiian Electric Companies to provide ongoing climate risk analytics services for generation, transmission and distribution infrastructure across five major islands of Hawaii. Jupiter also recently announced a capital investment from Elemental Excelerator (Elemental), a global infrastructure innovation accelerator. The funding, as part of Elemental’s Demonstration Track, will enable Jupiter to accelerate deployment of its flood and wind risk analytics services in the Pacific, beginning in Hawaii.
Jupiter allows companies to plan for 50+ year infrastructure risk associated with perils arising from climate change. The recent funding from Elemental adds to the more than $30 million in total funding Jupiter has received since the company’s founding in 2017.
Jupiter’s work with Hawaiian Electric will be part of an overall infrastructure resiliency and planning effort, assessing risk arising from perils like wind and flooding related to changing climate conditions on a 50-year time horizon. By harnessing AI-enabled climate models and the work of leading scientists including a Nobel laureate, Jupiter provides asset-level resolution for short and long-term flooding and wind risk with unprecedented precision.
"With increased attention on infrastructure resilience related to the impacts of climate change, the Hawaiian Electric Companies sought more sophisticated data and forecasting tools for its long-term planning," said Colton Ching, the companies' senior vice president of planning and technology. "We selected Jupiter because of their focus on specific customer decision-making requirements, terrific track record and reputation among other utilities, world class science, and ease to work with,” Ching said. "By adding climate risk analytics into our integrated grid planning process, we are significantly advancing our ability to make better decisions about the need, location, and timing of investment to provide the level of electric system resilience our customers expect.”
Jupiter’s FloodScore™, HeatScore™ and WindScore™ services for climate-related risk assessment and management continue to expand in locations around the globe. In addition to Hawaiian Electric, Jupiter’s other customers include one of the U.S.'s top 5 power companies, one of the world's top energy producers and one of the world's largest holders of mortgages. Jupiter’s ongoing expansion in the Pacific region includes operations in Japan, home of Jupiter investor Mitsui MS&AD.
“We’re excited to support companies like Jupiter that are focused on helping people and businesses in all communities prepare for and adapt to climate disruption,” said Nneka Uzoh, Elemental Excelerator’s Director of Energy Innovation. “Jupiter’s technology puts the power of change into the hands of critical infrastructure owners and operators like Hawaiian Electric Companies and helps them plan ahead to make energy assets safer, more reliable and more resilient.”
“Jupiter’s partnership with Hawaiian Electric represents a significant acceleration of our work in the Pacific, and we’re very pleased to have the support of Elemental Excelerator in this new phase of Jupiter’s growth,” said Rich Sorkin, CEO of Jupiter. “As the perils arising from climate change continue to disrupt critical industries, the need for accurate risk analytics and engineering resilience has never been more pressing. Hawaiian Electric is a pioneer in planning for climate resilience, and Jupiter welcomes the opportunity to help our customers prepare for this new and challenging reality.”
About Hawaiian Electric:
For 128 years, Hawaiian Electric Company has provided the energy that has fueled the islands' development from a Hawaiian kingdom to a modern American state. Hawaiian Electric and its subsidiaries, Maui Electric and Hawaii Electric Light, serve 95 percent of the state's 1.4 million residents on the islands of Oahu, Maui, Hawaii Island, Lanai and Molokai. For more information, please visit www.hawaiianelectric.com.
About Elemental Excelerator:
Elemental Excelerator helps startups change the world, one community at a time. Each year, Elemental Excelerator finds 15-20 companies that best fit its mission and fund each company up to $1 million to improve systems that impact people’s lives: energy, transportation, water, agriculture, and beyond. To date, Elemental has awarded over $35 million to 99 companies. For more information, please visit elementalexcelerator.com.
About Jupiter:
Jupiter is the global leader in data and analytics services to help make informed decisions that safeguard critical at-risk infrastructure from extreme weather, sea-level rise, storm intensification and rising temperatures caused by short, medium and long-term climate change. Jupiter’s ClimateScore™ Intelligence Platform provides sophisticated, dynamic, hyper-local, current-hour-to-50-plus-year probabilistic risk analysis for weather in a changing climate. The company’s FloodScore™, HeatScore™ and WindScore™ services are used or about to be deployed for climate-related risk assessment and management in New York City, South Florida, the Carolinas, Houston, Rotterdam, Singapore, Tokyo, London and other global markets. Jupiter’s models are based on the latest science, as developed by the global Earth and Ocean Systems science community.
Jupiter offers commercial services to asset owners in critical infrastructure, financial services including insurance and banking, energy and real estate, and the public sector. These customers use Jupiter services for a broad range of applications, including capital planning, risk management, site selection, design requirements, supply chain management, investment valuations, and shareholder disclosures. For more information, please visit jupiterintel.com.
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