Othersphere, the pioneering startup specializing in location optimization for zero / low greenhouse gas commodity infrastructure, today announced the successful close of C$3 million in seed funding. The round was led by Active Impact Investments, with additional contributions from Thin Line Capital, KDX, and Keiki Capital.
Othersphere has developed a patent-pending platform to identify ideal locations for commodity production assets based on economics, emissions, and fit with local surroundings. Othersphere initially serves project developers, offtakers, and financiers, beginning with hydrogen and expanding to other physical commodities over time.
Othersphere's core technology indexes the globe based on commodity, human, and environmental system variables, and was made possible by catalytic funding from Breakthrough Energy's Fellows program—a research and development fellowship focused on accelerating the commercialization of potential breakthrough climate technologies. Further support has been provided by Google for Startups.
"We believe that Othersphere will play a meaningful role in scaling the low-emission commodities that will drive the clean energy transition by addressing the massive project deployment bottleneck," said Mike Winterfield, Managing Partner at Active Impact Investments, Canada's largest climate tech seed fund. "Their platform lowers costs for customers while improving yields and reducing greenhouse gas emissions, all of which accelerates the development and adoption of low emissions commodities."
"Companies have to weigh a huge number of factors when deciding where to locate climate technology projects, from clean hydrogen production to direct air capture," said Ashley Grosh, VP of Breakthrough Energy Fellows. "Othersphere will make it easy for climate tech companies to evaluate where they can have the biggest impact, demystifying a complicated process with the potential to accelerate decarbonization."
Currently in closed beta development, Othersphere's initial SaaS product offers multiple benefits:
"Thanks to our investors, Othersphere is poised to accelerate scaling of zero / low GHG commodities, starting with hydrogen," said Othersphere CEO, Robert Murphy. "Our products are designed to reduce project risk and improve stakeholder alignment, to help unlock the trillions of dollars needed to deliver sustainable, equitable global prosperity. This funding allows us to grow the incredible team that will bring our first product to market. We are excited to hear from potential users and stakeholders as we move toward launch, and in particular hydrogen consumers interested in participating in our offtaker survey program."
For further information: press@othersphere.io, Phone: +1 (236) 428-4400
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Equipment sizing and operating strategy LCOH optimizations for hydrogen electrolysis plants are cumbersome and time-consuming. It can take days to weeks to get the data, with each optimization run often taking hours. This limits analytical efforts to a handful of potential sites, leaving many opportunities unexplored.
The result — sub-optimal capital allocation and higher risks, with countless missed opportunities.The difference between initial cost calculations versus hourly optimizations can be dramatic, and highlights location as a critical element of project success.
Othersphere has revolutionized this process by combining the power of our underlying spatial economics platform with neural networks for dimensionality reduction and surrogate modeling.
Our global search engine now recommends pre-optimized projects in seconds, having already run an hourly optimization considering:
1) Hourly day-ahead wholesale power market pricing
2) Grid upgrade CAPEX (developed with a global leader in grid transmission engineering and equipment)
3) Grid fees associated with transmission connections
4) Variable stack efficiency by load, incorporating operational ranges
5) System economies of scale, as well as commercial and technical nuances between PEM and alkaline plants
6) Hourly carbon intensity data
7) Demand profiles and cost of storage
8) Co-located renewables CAPEX
9) High-spatial resolution hourly solar and wind capacity factor data
All of this is delivered through the Othersphere Explorer tool, which provides a novel, bottom-up view of potential hydrogen projects, evaluating key factors such as production costs, emissions, available offtakers, and fit with local surroundings.
Introducing the world’s first global optimizer for hydrogen projects
Topography is one of the many variables within the Othersphere Explorer tool used to reveal and diligence optimal siting of sustainable infrastructure projects. To inform this analysis we use licensed data, open data, and novel datasets we have created or augmented. Our topography data is an example of the latter, where we built upon the exceptional work within the Multi-Error-Removed Improved-Terrain Digital Elevation Model (MERIT DEM).
🔍 Augmented for massive-scale analysis
To make this sophisticated dataset even more accessible, we have introduced tiling to the MERIT DEM. Each tile offers detailed elevation and ruggedness data, enhancing usability for systematic geographical analyses.
🚀 Tackling climate must be a group effort
We are excited to release this tiled dataset derived from MERIT DEM, adhering to licensing requirements and aiming to benefit the broader community working on topographical challenges. This data is provided as a parquet file (~4.5GB) and is access through Google Cloud Storage. Please click here to learn more about setting up a Google account to access the data and here to learn more about gsutil for downloading files. Alternatively, please contact explore@othersphere.io can we can work with you to determine other file delivery options.
Multi-Error-Removed Improved-Terrain Digital Elevation Model (MERIT DEM) is a sophisticated dataset that addresses terrain issues common in other mapping efforts.
Please reach out if you would like to learn more about Othersphere, our products, and opportunities to partner in accelerating global industrial decarbonization.