Submitted
2025 Global Climate Challenge

Lumigrid: Building Resiliency

Team Leader
Cale Cornelison
Lumigrid is a smart planning and optimization tool for renewable energy development that brings together permitting data, workforce planning, infrastructure maps, and environmental performance insights. Using AI and GIS, it helps developers streamline project siting, pre-qualify opportunities, align with upcoming transmission upgrades, and reduce soft costs. The platform integrates with both public and proprietary datasets, forecasting environmental benefit, social return,...
What is the name of your organization?
Lumigrid
What is the name of your solution?
Lumigrid: Building Resiliency
Provide a one-line summary or tagline for your solution.
Enabling the renewable energy industry to inventory and analyze projects from cradle to grave using machine learning to optimize asset lifecycles.
In what city, town, or region is your solution team headquartered?
Pawhuska, OK 74056, USA
In what country is your solution team headquartered?
USA
What type of organization is your solution team?
For-profit, including B-Corp or similar models
Film your elevator pitch.
What specific problem are you solving?
The energy transition is accelerating, yet deployment remains slowed by workforce shortages, permitting delays, and regulatory complexity: especially in rural and tribal communities. Projects face fragmented local authority requirements, vague community benefit expectations, and limited tools for forecasting special project risks. Permitting remains non-standardized, struggling to balance environmental protection with urgency. Insurance markets tighten amid uncertain risk exposure, while compliance with Davis-Bacon and wage laws adds friction with little digital infrastructure to assist. Field conditions remain disconnected from executive planning, and current data platforms lack integration across stakeholders. Operational issues also persist. With over 2 terawatts of global solar capacity now installed, equipment-driven underperformance has doubled in five years, costing billions in 2024 and averaging 249 component defects per installed megawatt per year, or nearly half a billion defects globally. These are often untracked: undermining performance, financing, and confidence. Decommissioning obligations: now mandated by many states, face data voids that prevent accurate costing and timely bond issuance. By 2040, 27 million tons of solar waste will be generated annually, valued near $80 billion and capable of offsetting 40% of future panel needs. Without lifecycle planning tools, the clean energy buildout risks being more expensive, and less equitable than promised.
What is your solution?
Lumigrid is a smart planning and optimization tool for renewable energy development that brings together permitting data, workforce planning, infrastructure maps, and environmental performance insights. Using AI and GIS, it helps developers streamline project siting, pre-qualify opportunities, align with upcoming transmission upgrades, and reduce soft costs. The platform integrates with both public and proprietary datasets, forecasting environmental benefit, social return, and compliance needs. It enables rural and tribal governments to present shovel-ready projects and simplifies permitting for low-capacity Authorities Having Jurisdiction (AHJs). Lumigrid also includes workforce insights and training modules that align with local hiring initiatives which empower regions that lack an existing workforce to build capacity. By focusing on lifecycle optimization from concept to operation, it supports developers, policymakers, and utilities in deploying energy faster, cheaper, and with greater benefit.
Who does your solution serve, and in what ways will the solution impact their lives?
We serve tribal nations, rural municipalities, energy developers, and workforce leaders: stakeholders often overlooked in the energy transition due to permitting complexity, limited grid access, and workforce shortages. As the global solar industry surpasses 2 terawatts of installed capacity, underperformance and labor strain are surging: unresolved DC equipment issues led to $10B+ in lost revenue in 2024 alone, and nearly 70% of O&M costs now stem from labor-based inflation. Lumigrid helps communities address these gaps by making energy planning visible, accessible, and actionable. We centralize permitting, funding pathways, and grid data so under-resourced Authorities Having Jurisdiction can streamline approvals and align with federal priorities. For rural and tribal communities, we help justify infrastructure investments by mapping projects to regional transmission and broadband plans. Critically, our AI-powered workforce modules don’t replace human labor; they elevate it. Through wearable tech and real-time training dashboards, Lumigrid supports the new wave of electricians and solar technicians, addressing urgent shortages and the retirement of 30% of the current electrical workforce. A clean energy economy won’t run on sensors alone. It requires boots on the ground, empowered with tools, data, and access to opportunity. Lumigrid ensures those most impacted by the transition help lead it.
Solution Team:
Cale Cornelison
Cale Cornelison
Lead Strategist