VIA Highlighted in “The Rise of Privacy Preserving AI”

VIA was recently featured in a second Axios article titled “The Rise of Privacy Preserving AI”. The article discusses how new AI methods, such as federated learning, allow companies to benefit from collective data analytics, without having to reveal sensitive data.

In energy, predicting the next catastrophic power equipment failure requires data on previous problems. Because these events are rare, companies need to team up to share their data for collective analytics. VIA launched the Global Data Asset Collaborative (GDAC™): Transformers, where power companies are able to share data while still preserving privacy (through federated learning), with the goal of improving decision making related to operations, maintenance, and replacement of transformers.

To read the full article, visit Axios’ website.

The Westly Group Leads $7M Investment in VIA

VIA, a leader in using artificial intelligence and blockchain to provide security and data analytic solutions for the energy and utility industry, announced that the Westly Group is leading a $7M seed investment in Via Science, Inc. (VIA). The funding will accelerate VIA’s customer acquisition and increase the number of network operators in its Global Data Asset Collaborative™ (GDAC™) program. GDAC™ is the power industry’s first predictive maintenance application combined with a multi-company, privacy protected, distributed database of equipment data.

“The Westly Group has met with over a hundred AI and blockchain companies, and we believe that VIA is the clear leader in the energy sector. VIA has a groundbreaking business model and a unique approach to collaborative analytics. This combination is exactly what the power industry is waiting for,” said Steve Westly, founder and managing partner of the Westly Group.

“Our team at VIA is very excited to have selected the Westly Group as partners. What impressed us most about the Westly Group is the breadth and depth of the relationships they have in the power sector. Their LP base of major global utilities is unparalleled. Membership in our GDAC™ program is already growing. With the support of the Westly Group, adoption by network operators will only increase,” said Colin Gounden, CEO of VIA.

About VIA

VIA helps energy companies across the globe realize the value of their data through AI and blockchain. The company works with the world’s largest utilities and government agencies on AI initiatives like predictive maintenance and contingency planning. VIA has developed a blockchain-based application, Trusted Analytics Chain™ (TAC™) to help energy companies reduce the burden of preparing and sharing their data. TAC™ (patents pending) is the bridge that securely connects power company data, distributed across many locations, to potential AI solutions. Headquartered in Somerville, Massachusetts, VIA has been featured in Wired and Inc. Magazine for its leadership in technology innovation. For more information, please visit www.solvewithvia.com.

About The Westly Group

The Westly Group has successfully raised three venture funds that invest in rapidly growing software, IoT and Big Data companies in the smart energy, mobility and building sectors.  The Westly Group has 12 of the world’s larger energy and auto companies as investors and has had four companies go public on NASDAQ including Tesla Motors.

Hawaiian Electric Joins as Second Founding Member of GDAC™, Alongside Vector

VIA and Hawaiian Electric are pleased to share that Hawaiian Electric has joined GDAC™ alongside Vector, as the second founding member. By joining in the collaborative (which is in partnership with Elemental Excelerator) and focusing on substation transformers, Hawaiian Electric hopes to improve decision making related to operations, maintenance, and replacement of their substation transformers. In particular, its goal is to reduce unexpected issues or failures, determine the right spare equipment inventory levels, and reduce the frequency of corrective maintenance.

“Like most electric utilities, Hawaiian Electric does its best to maximize use of grid infrastructure, some of which are nearing the end of their practical use,” said Rick Pinkerton, Director, Asset Management at Hawaiian Electric. “As we modernize our grid, we’re always looking for ways to improve our decision making. We joined GDAC™ to learn from other members and from VIA’s expertise in AI and machine learning, to improve our capabilities to prudently manage the performance, risk, and cost of our fleet of substation transformers, and other T&D assets in general.”

During the inaugural GDAC™ workshop, Hawaiian Electric and fellow GDAC™ member, Vector, shared and discussed their current substation transformer fleet management practices, plans, and challenges, as well as specific GDAC™ efforts and outcomes that would provide the most value to each member.

“We’re thrilled to have Hawaiian Electric join the GDAC™ community. Hawaiian Electric has been referred to in the industry as a “postcard from the future” due to their high levels of distributed solar penetration, progress towards transforming their grid to provide 100 percent renewable energy by 2045, and experience dealing with a host of unprecedented challenges that many in the industry will not face for several years,” said Kate Ravanis, Chief Operating Officer at VIA. “Their position as an innovative leader in the industry and the contributions they made at the GDAC™ workshop were invaluable to other members and the overall project outcome.”

Hawaiian Electric will be contributing multiple years of operational, test, maintenance, and failure data from more than 300 substation transformers alongside similar data for Vector’s 200-plus substation transformers. The company is excited about joining the GDAC™ community and may have an interest in joining other GDAC™ initiatives, in addition to substation transformers.

About VIA

VIA helps energy companies across the globe realize the value of their data through AI and blockchain. The company works with the world’s largest utilities and government agencies on AI initiatives like predictive maintenance and contingency planning. VIA has developed a blockchain-based application, Trusted Analytics Chain™ (TAC™) to help energy companies reduce the burden of preparing and sharing their data. TAC™ (patents pending) is the bridge that securely connects power company data, distributed across many locations, to potential AI solutions. Headquartered in Somerville, Massachusetts, VIA has been featured in Wired and Inc. Magazine for its leadership in technology innovation. For more information, please visit www.solvewithvia.com.

About Hawaiian Electric

The Hawaiian Electric Companies (Hawaiian Electric Company, Maui Electric Company, and Hawaiʽi Electric Light Company) serve 95 percent of Hawaii’s 1.4 million residents on the islands of Oʽahu, Maui, Hawaiʽi Island, Lānaʽi and Molokaʽi and have a goal of 100 percent renewables by 2045.

GreenBiz Features VIA in Article About Startups at the Plug and Play Spring Summit

Earlier this month, VIA’s Colin Gounden gave a presentation at Plug and Play’s Spring Summit 2019. Senior writer and analyst at GreenBiz, Katie Fehrenbacher, was in attendance and featured VIA in an article titled “Here’s Why Energy Companies Are Adopting AI”.  

The article describes common problems that major energy companies face, such as the need for better quality data to run their businesses more efficiently, and how extreme weather is putting pressure on their infrastructure. Startups, like VIA, are using AI and machine learning to solve for these issues and help energy asset managers make smarter decisions to reduce cost and risk to their equipment. VIA was mentioned as a solution to help utilities better predict when transformers might be at risk in a disaster through the use of its blockchain-based application, Trusted Analytics Chain™ (TAC™).

In March, VIA was selected for the Spring 2019 cohort of Plug and Play’s Energy and Sustainability accelerator program.

To read the full article, check out the Greenbiz website.

Colin Gounden presenting at Plug and Play Spring Summit 2019

Image courtesy of Plug and Play

Axios Features VIA in Article, “Predicting the Next Power Disaster”

Colin Gounden recently sat down with Kaveh Waddell of leading online publication, Axios. They discussed how extreme weather, increased energy consumption, EVs, and renewable resources are challenging the safety and reliability of the grid. And, in particular, how AI companies like VIA are quickly becoming a critical piece of the puzzle for solving the declining US infrastructure problem.

To read the full article, check out the Axios website.

The Importance of Unit Testing

In March, VIA’s Ashley DaSilva, Team Leader, Product Development, was invited to lead a workshop on unit testing for McGill’s Computer Science Graduate Society. The workshop was part of their seminar series: CS Tools and Tricks, which introduces graduate students to topics they may not otherwise explore in depth in their academic programs. Ashley discussed the critical importance of software testing, why developers should embrace unit testing, and when and how to use mocking. She shares her experience with unit testing and a recap of her workshop below.

Learning Never Goes Out of Style

I first learned the importance of software testing in the early days of my theoretical physics Phd program. Back then, most of my coding was limited to scripting. I wrote scripts to model physical systems, analyze data, and visualize results. Over time, I started writing modules to be reused by myself or my colleagues for different projects. The first time I attempted to refactor one of these modules, it broke in unexpected ways, and I spent days tracking down and resolving all the issues.

I’ve grown significantly as a developer since those days, and now lead a product development team at VIA, focused specifically on the Trusted Analytics Chain™ (TAC™). Every day, my team and I build, test, and deploy Docker containers with microservices. This includes Airflow and RabbitMQ for scheduling tasks, Redis as a cache storage, and BigchainDB to host a blockchain. Software testing is critical to each stage of product development, and something we constantly work to improve.

Unit testing is the foundation of VIA’s software testing process, and an essential skill for all of our developers. For example, TAC™ contains several components that all need to communicate with each other. We maintain a list of python scripts that are authorized to run on the system. Components of TAC™ must download this list to verify the checksum of the scripts. If we did not use mocking for the content of the list in the unit tests of these verification functions, then every time the list was updated, the tests would all have to be updated to account for the change. With mocking, we are free to update the list of scripts without affecting the status of the unit tests.

Ready, Set, Resilience!

Clean Architectures in Python by Leonardo Giordani is a great resource for learning more about unit testing and test-driven development. During my workshop at McGill, I presented examples of unit testing and mocking and shared a few exercises for the students to practice on their own. Some of these exercises came from the github repository associated with Giordani’s book. I’ve included some other examples below:

First, let’s look at a snippet of code. The code below shows a DataAnalyzer class. It has a method, get_data, which is a placeholder for however one would want to retrieve the data from an external resource (e.g., a database or an http request). It also has a method,
analyze_data which performs the sum of the items in a list:

class DataAnalyzer:
   def get_data(self):
      # Gets data from an external resource
      pass
      def analyze_data(self):
         data = self.get_data()
         result = sum(data)
         return result

The code below shows one example of a unit test that uses mocking of the get_data method:

from unittest import mock
from calc.analyzer import DataAnalyzer
def test_analyzer():
   analyzer = DataAnalyzer()
   with mock.patch("calc.analyzer.DataAnalyzer.get_data", return_value=[1.0, 2.1, 3.5]):
      result = analyzer.analyze_data()
   assert result == 6.6

In this example, the unittest.mock.patch will be applied to the method specified as its first argument and return the assigned return value every time that method is called from inside the scope of the patch. A sample list is assigned to the return value of the patch of the get_data method. This list should have the same format as the expected output of the get_data method, which in this case is a list of floating point numbers. Finally, the result of the analyze_data method is checked that it matches the expected value.

Mocking can also be used to check how you handle exceptions:

import pytest
from unittest import mock
from calc.analyzer import DataAnalyzer
def test_analyzer_connection_error():
   analyzer = DataAnalyzer()
   with mock.patch("calc.analyzer.DataAnalyzer.get_data", side_effect=ConnectionError("Could not connect.")):
      with pytest.raises(ConnectionError):
         analyzer.analyze_data()

In this example, instead of specifying a return value, there is a side effect. When the specified method is called, the side effect will be executed. In this case, a ConnectionError is raised by the get_data method. Using a side effect is particularly applicable when you have logic in your code that catches and recovers from errors.

Stay Curious

I enjoyed leading a thoughtful discussion on unit testing, and fielded some great questions from the students. One that stood out to me was:

“How can developers make sure that their mocks don’t get out of date?”

This is a really important and sometimes tricky topic! At VIA, we know that unit testing is only the first step of software testing. We also use other types of tests, like integration tests or end-to-end tests help identify problems in mocking before our software reaches users. And isolating and resolving problems at that stage is key to setting ourselves up for a successful integration. 

Mocking allows the freedom to isolate one particular part of your code and focus your unit tests on that functionality. Ideally, the expected inputs and outputs of the component being mocked are not going to change. This is typically true for external modules that you will use, at least within a particular major release of the software. However, if you know a software update will cause a change to your internal code base, it is your responsibility to recognize and communicate how that will affect your teammates. That’s why VIA believes that, in addition to testing, strong team communication and values like Learning Never Goes out of Style, Ready, Set, Resilience!, and Stay Curious are what help us develop and deliver the best iterations of our software to our users. 

VIA Accepted Into Plug and Play’s Energy and Sustainability Accelerator Program

Joe Babiec, Vice President, Strategic Initiatives During Selection Day

VIA is pleased to share that we have been selected for the Spring 2019 cohort of Plug and Play’s Energy and Sustainability accelerator program. Plug and Play is one of Silicon Valley’s most prominent startup accelerators and venture investors. They connect competitively selected startups with their ecosystem of 280 major corporate partners and more than 200 VCs. Among the most notable program alumni are Paypal and Dropbox.

VIA is one of 15 companies chosen from more than 200 candidates to participate in Plug and Play’s intensive 10-week Energy and Sustainability program. During the final stage of the selection process in February, VIA’s own Joe Babiec pitched to a group of international utility companies and energy-focused venture capital firms.

Plug and Play’s Founder and CEO, Saeed Amidi, touches on the potential of the startups accepted into the program:

“It is fantastic to see such a talented group of entrepreneurs accepted into our programs. We aim to give our startups the best chance for success and these next three months will give them the tools and connections they need to thrive,” said Saeed Amidi, Founder and CEO of Plug and Play. “I am excited to see what they can accomplish when integrated into our ecosystem.”

For more information, see Plug and Play’s recent announcement.

 

BitcoinExchangeGuide.com Emphasizes Potential of GDAC

BitcoinExchangeGuide.com (B.E.G.), considered one of the “fastest-growing bitcoin and blockchain media outlets on the Internet”, recently shared details of VIA and Vector’s GDAC™ announcement, and describes how it will help energy companies improve operations:

“The fact that this collaboration has VIA means that GDAC™ will be AI-based. And indeed it is at its core given that when it’s finally rolled out, GDAC™ will help power distribution corporations leverage Artificial Intelligence to foretell imminent power faults. Essentially, it will help them take a proactive approach when managing electricity transformers.

AI will also allow the company to conduct regular maintenance works on transformers safely and with greater precision. This way, the company will achieve significant operational efficiencies and subsequently deliver better services for its clients.”

For the full article titled “New Global Data Asset Collaborative (GDAC™) by VIA and Vector for Energy Transformer Data,” please visit their website.

VIA’s Joe Babiec Attends DistribuTECH Conference & Exhibition in New Orleans

Earlier this month, VP, Strategic Initiatives, Joe Babiec attended DistribuTECH, the utility industry’s leading conference on electric power transmission and distribution. Hosted in New Orleans, the event featured speakers from Exelon, FERC, and Siemens, among others, and welcomed more than 12,000 attendees over two days.  

“Speakers like Paul Hinnenkamp of Entergy, and many vendors emphasized the importance of customer and operational data. A major theme of the conference was the value of gathering and analyzing this data in order to improve current operating efficiency and create new services. I spoke with representatives from a number of utilities about this issue, and I was delighted they felt that VIA’s TAC™ application offers a great solution to the difficult challenge of making customer and operational data more easily available for analysis,” remarked Joe.  

For more information on the event, please visit DistribuTECH’s website.

 

Vector and VIA Partner to Establish Global Data Asset Collaborative™ (GDAC™), a Multi-Company Transformer Database

VIA is thrilled to announce our partnership with Auckland-based energy company, Vector, to build the world’s first privacy preserving, multi-company database for machine learning-ready transformer data, called the Global Data Asset Collaborative™ (GDAC™): Transformers.

Simon Mackenzie, Group Chief Executive Officer at Vector, comments on the importance of this collaborative:

“With a larger, smarter and more collaborative data asset like the GDAC™ we can refine the information we depend on to keep our network assets in the best possible shape. This is becoming increasingly important as we transition the network to meet the needs of the new energy future, where new technologies like distributed energy resources and battery storage will integrate with the network at scale. We have a responsibility to make this transition as efficiently as we can, and without burdening customers with excessive infrastructure costs. Improving our data and analytics capability will play a central role in that.”

To read the full press release, visit Vector’s website.

VIA’s Colin Gounden and Jeremy Taylor Attend Opening of Innovation Center Denmark in Boston

Earlier this week, CEO Colin Gounden and CSO Jeremy Taylor were among a select group invited to the inauguration ceremony for Denmark’s Innovation Center in Kendall Square. VIA has established a presence within Denmark’s innovation community, thanks in large part to the support of Accelerace’s Cleantech program. This center is part of a partnership between the Danish Ministry of Higher Education and Science and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Boston now joins Silicon Valley, Shanghai, Tel Aviv, Munich, New Delhi/Bangalore, Sao Paolo, and Seoul on the list of cities home to Danish Innovation Centers.

The new center will create opportunities for Danish researchers and companies to connect with Boston’s universities and cutting-edge start-ups, with a focus on cleantech and sustainable energy solutions.

Jeremy Taylor joined the roundtable discussion led by Danish Minister for Higher Education and Science Tommy Ahlers. “Denmark has established an innovation cluster for artificial intelligence and robotics. One topic we discussed was the challenge with supporting ongoing development of these technologies in a socially and ethically responsible way. Montreal recently released its Declaration for Responsible AI, and I think that could be a great roadmap for Danish researchers and entrepreneurs as well,” said Jeremy.

 

VIA Denmark Innovation VIA Denmark Innovation

The 5 Game Changers that Made 2018 VIA’s Year

Trusted Analytics Chain™ (TAC™)
In 2018, VIA’s Trusted Analytics Chain™ (TAC™) moved from early development stages to first pilots and now, is ready for an official launch in Q1 2019. Along the way, we were invited to speak about TAC™ at events across three continents, including the 9th Asian Leadership Conference in Seoul, Iberdrola’s Innoday in Madrid, and Greentech Media’s Blockchain in Energy Forum in San Francisco.

We were honored to accept the MITX Best Technology Innovation Concept award, which recognized TAC™’s potential to transform the energy industry. In addition, we demonstrated TAC™’s capabilities during our first ever webinar this past fall.

CEO Colin Gounden ALC

VIA TAC MITX Award

VIA Greentech Media

 

 

 

 

 

 

Team Growth and Development
VIA nearly doubled in size this year with the addition of 10 new team members in both our Somerville and Montreal offices. And, we are actively recruiting for the following positions to be based out of the Montreal office: Front-End Developer, User Interface and Experience Designer, Software Developer, Software Engineer, and DevOps Specialist. Visit our Careers page for more information and to apply.

VIA Hiring

Press Features
VIA enjoyed a record number of press features this year, highlighting both our technology and the team behind the tech. In January, CEO Colin Gounden was interviewed for Inc. Magazine to discuss VIA’s approach to building its team.

Additional media outlets include: com! Professional Magazine, FutureTech podcast, Digitex Futures, and Clean Energy Finance Forum. For links to these features, visit our Press page.

VIA Inc. Magazine

 

 

Brand Refresh
In March, VIA debuted its new name, logo, and website, as part of a brand refresh. We also introduced “Solve with VIA” as an anchor to our brand, one developed through brainstorming with the entire VIA team and consulting with our most trusted partners. The idea that clients “Solve with VIA” was an ever-present theme through these creative sessions, and ultimately inspired VIA’s newly designed logo. The logo visually represents the journey VIA takes with its clients from identifying a problem to finding a solution.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Partnerships
We are so grateful to our partners that have helped support our progress and made our success possible. And, today we are proud to announce our newest partner, KWHCoin. Through our partnership, KWHCoin will use VIA’s Trusted Analytics Chain™ (TAC™) to securely and anonymously analyze consumer behavior from smart meter data in order to help its utility partners better incentivize their customers to use renewable sources and clean energy. Earlier this year, we also began working with BigchainDB, leveraging their database to make TAC™ a consortium blockchain.

We were accepted to Accelerace, one of Europe’s top-seed accelerators, as part of their Cleantech program. Accelerace will help us establish a corporate presence in Denmark, make introductions to leading European utilities, and gain mentorship from experienced Danish entrepreneurs, cleantech executives, and industry experts.

Additionally, we were accepted to NVIDIA’s Inception program, which is designed to nurture startups revolutionizing industries with advancements in AI and data science.

VIA Accelerace

Joe Babiec Speaks at EUCI Conference on Blockchain, Energy Sector

In October, VIA’s Joe Babiec, VP, Strategic Initiatives, was invited to present at EUCI’s conference: “The Blockchain Technology Revolution: Implications for the Energy Sector”. Hosted in New Orleans, the event welcomed thought leaders and decision makers from leading utilities and energy providers, local government agencies, research organizations, and technology companies to discuss business use cases of blockchain in the energy industry.

In his session, “Valuation of Utility Data Through Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence”, Joe discussed the ways customers are using VIA’s TAC application to reduce costs and monetize operational data in secure and privacy-protected ways. He explained how TAC’s blockchain-enabled smart contracting capability allows data owners and analysts to reach agreements with one another much faster than by traditional methods, and with the confidence that the terms of their agreement will be observed by all parties.

Fellow presenter Kristen Brown, a principal of technology innovation at Exelon, touched on implications of the transformation taking place in the energy industry. Specifically, she called on energy companies to embrace the transition from business models that prioritize “pipelines” to new approaches that emphasize generating value from “platforms” that connect energy providers and consumers in new ways.

For information on upcoming EUCI conferences, visit their website.

Clean Energy Finance Forum Features VIA, Trusted Analytics Chain (TAC) in Recent Post

Clean Energy Finance Forum (CEFF) recently featured VIA’s presentation at Greentech Media’s Blockchain in Energy event, which took place in San Francisco this past September. The event invited technology and energy experts to discuss opportunities for blockchain technology to transform the energy industry. CEFF shared this recap:

VIA is also working to deploy blockchain applications for smart asset management. Joe Babiec, VIA’s vice president of strategic initiatives, said that blockchain-enabled smart asset management can help improve project benchmarking and maintenance scheduling. It can also support investment in equipment upgrades.

Capital investment accounts for the largest share of distribution costs as utilities work to upgrade aging equipment. According to a 2015 United States Department of Energy report, 70 percent of power transformers are 25 years of age or older, 60 percent of circuit breakers are 30 years or older, and 70 percent of transmission lines are 25 years or older.

Investment in upgrading equipment such as electrical poles, transmission wires, and substation transformers is on the rise, the report said. Utilities are seeking new ways to improve frequency and voltage control during system emergencies, accommodate greater use of renewables, and withstand extreme weather events.

VIA was already using artificial intelligence to better predict equipment maintenance needs and improve resiliency planning before developing its blockchain platform. It now offers utilities and other energy providers a blockchain-enabled system for establishing secure access to confidential maintenance data for analysis by third parties. The data can be stored in the cloud or locally.

To read the full article, visit Clean Energy Finance Forum’s website.

VIA’s Joe Babiec Invited to Speak at Cleantech Group’s Executive Summit

In October, Joe Babiec, VIA’s VP, Strategic Initiatives, was invited to speak at Cleantech Group’s Executive Summit, “Blockchain in Energy & Mobility”. The summit, hosted in New York, invited top leaders in energy and blockchain to discuss the technical, commercial, and regulatory challenges of scaling blockchain-based applications within the energy industry.

Joe spoke on the opening panel, which focused on the value propositions and business models being used by innovating companies like VIA. He explained how VIA’s Trusted Analytics Chain (TAC) application generates revenue by helping energy companies reduce operations and maintenance costs, and by providing secure, private data access to external analysts. Joe also noted that TAC has an important advantage as a new product: unlike some future-oriented blockchain applications, TAC helps energy companies address challenges and opportunities they already experience, so using TAC allows companies to realize substantial benefits right away.

VIA is now engaging in a series of proof of concept pilots to confirm TAC’s evolution from a prototype to a production-ready application. The company plans to officially launch TAC in 2019.