Energize Capital is proud to lead a strategic growth investment in Nira Energy, a pioneering software platform helping transmission engineers optimize interconnection and grid planning. This marks our first major investment in grid interconnection software, following years of research into grid infrastructure and renewable energy. Energize partner Tyler Lancaster and principal Mark Tomasovic will join Nira’s board.
Today’s economy hinges on access to energy. From tech companies building powerful data centers to industrial manufacturers meeting growing demands for domestic production, operators of today’s global infrastructure are facing a new set of challenges: Where is there energy, and how can we access it?
Luckily, declining cost curves and maturing production models have created rich opportunities for renewables developers to build new energy systems—ones that can quickly scale to meet growing demands across sectors—and today, solar and wind make up over 25% of generating capacity. But there’s a snag: the physical systems of energy delivery are badly outdated and unable to handle these new resources. Within the U.S., over 70% of the grid is over 25 years old, and its components are ill-equipped to handle either the scale of a projected 8.2% energy demand increase over the next five years or the distributed and variable nature of renewable assets.
What results is a massive transmission bottleneck. Between 2010 and today, the backlog of energy projects waiting to connect to the grid has ballooned from 450 gigawatts to over 2.6 terawatts—more than double the U.S.’s current installed capacity. These projects can be immensely risky, stuck in an opaque, costly queue process that lasts an average of three years and requires multiple large deposits to maintain eligibility and progress through approval stages. Additionally, developers shoulder extra costs to hire expensive consultants to run power flow studies, determine upgrade requirements, and identify viable points of connection. Attempts to improve the process, including federal reforms like FERC Order 2023, have seen limited success – still, only 19% of projects in the queue ever reach operation.
Enter Nira Energy, a grid-tech company taking aim at the transmission bottleneck. Nira offers a modern, cloud-based software platform that simplifies and accelerates transmission interconnection and planning. Trusted by over 100 leading solar, storage, and data center developers like AES, Invenergy, Scout Energy, BW Solar, and Doral, Nira provides fast, actionable insights into grid constraints and costs—making projects easier to plan, quicker to deploy, and less risky for investors and developers. Nira offers two tools:
To date, Nira has supported over 500 GW of interconnection studies across all major U.S. power markets—both regulated and deregulated—and helped uncover more than $3 billion in cost discrepancies for its users. Thanks to its capital-efficient business model and rapid customer adoption, the company has been profitable since its founding in 2021.
As investors at the intersection of digital innovation and the energy transition, we see Nira as a clear match for Energize. Through years of research and conversations with developers, operators, and other customers, we’ve long recognized interconnection as one of the most critical—and addressable—bottlenecks in the energy transition. Among the solutions we evaluated, Nira stood out as the strongest: a platform delivering speed, transparency, and smarter decision-making to a process that has long stalled renewable deployment.
Nira was founded in Denver, CO, by Chris Ariante (CEO), Andrew Martin (Head of Transmission), and Andy Chen (CTO)—a team of engineers and software leaders with deep expertise in grid planning and interconnection. Having worked inside utilities and ISO/RTO processes, they saw firsthand how outdated tools were limiting progress. They launched Nira to modernize the planning process—replacing static spreadsheets and siloed models with dynamic, collaborative software built for today’s grid.
Profitable and growing, Nira plans to expand its team across engineering, sales, and customer success. With Energize’s support, the company is also developing tools for long-range reliability studies, scenario modeling, and grid coordination, and plans to broaden its platform to serve utilities, ISOs, and transmission providers. Explore open roles with Nira here.
We’re excited to support Nira as they work to accelerate the transition to a cleaner, more reliable grid.
