Uncharted Power Launches First US Sustainable Infrastructure Pilot in Poughkeepsie, NY

NEW YORK, Oct. 20, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Uncharted Power, a leader in sustainable infrastructure, today announced the inaugural pilot of its Uncharted System in Poughkeepsie, NY. With a $1.8 million multi-year grant in pilot funding provided by Siegel Family Endowment and the Community Foundations of the Hudson Valley, the Uncharted System will convert the City of Poughkeepsie's sidewalks and roads into an industrial IoT platform that streamlines the deployment and management of critical infrastructure, from power grids and broadband to sidewalks and water pipes.

"Our world is in crisis. It is utter insanity that despite continued technological innovation, communities across the U.S. and globe are struggling to receive the basic resources needed to function in today's society," said Jessica O. Matthews, founder and CEO of Uncharted Power. "After nearly a decade of work, we realized that the problem isn't just the lack of smart power infrastructure. The problem is everyone has been focused on building smart products, not smart cities. Without an efficient integration platform to deploy and manage these power, municipal, and new "smart city" technologies in our communities, the result will always be piecemeal solutions that most cities can't afford. It is an honor to partner with my hometown of Poughkeepsie and the Siegel Family Endowment team to demonstrate a solution that will finally give cities and their citizens reliable access to the resources they need."

The Uncharted System consists of a modular, serviceable paver that is installed just inches in the ground and a digital dashboard. The paver enables power delivery, edge data collection, and easy integration with smart city technologies. The digital dashboard creates a living digital twin of the community, streamlining the management of all the city's infrastructure. Taking a phased approach over the next two years, the Uncharted System will connect infrastructure within Poughkeepsie's new Innovation District to create a resilient network of distributed power, compute, and communications, promoting increased equitable technological innovation and laying the foundation for fully upgradeable IoT and smart city deployments. When installed, the Uncharted System creates a mesh network of nano data centers that provide cloud services. These data centers help to subsidize the cost of the sustainable infrastructure, diverting the cost burden from the city and the people it serves.

Siegel Family Endowment initially identified the Uncharted System's potential to spur innovative sustainable infrastructure development in 2019, and through a partnership with the Community Foundations of the Hudson Valley, began a multi-year grant to support the pilot pre-development process. This support for the Poughkeepsie pilot is designed to advance the implementation of Uncharted Power's holistic approach to serving those living in local communities. Founded by computer scientist and entrepreneur David Siegel, Siegel Family Endowment supports organizations that help prepare society for the impact of technology, focusing on how technology can improve learning, workforce, and infrastructure. "Infrastructure: Building the World We Deserve," a recent white paper by Siegel Family Endowment, introduces a new multidimensional framework for understanding infrastructure and highlights how Uncharted Power has "taken an ecosystem approach to create smarter, more equitable infrastructure that accounts for physical, social, and digital dimensions. Once the problems are examined through a multidimensional lens, the solutions that come to the foreground are often naturally synergistic and create value across every dimension."

"At Siegel Family Endowment, we're interested in supporting the work of organizations that have ambitious, far-reaching ideas for addressing the challenges we collectively face as a society," said Katy Knight, Executive Director of Siegel Family Endowment. "This partnership with the city of Poughkeepsie is an exciting opportunity to bring the aspects of multidimensional infrastructure that Uncharted Power's new system is so emblematic of to bear in the real world. We're excited to see these systems continue to develop and scale, and to help advance thinking about infrastructure systems of all kinds."

"Our partnership with Uncharted Power is an investment in the communities that make-up the great city of Poughkeepsie," said Rob Rolison, Mayor of Poughkeepsie. "Our power and data infrastructure impacts Poughkeepsie resident's ability to work, learn, and succeed everyday. This pilot program will demonstrate how we can rebuild our local infrastructure to be resilient in the face of new challenges and accelerate growth for our local businesses and residents." 

The pilot marks a critical milestone in Uncharted Power's trajectory that includes its selection as a member of the Elemental Excelerator's 9th Cohort and the recent appointment of industry veteran, Bill Pugh, as Uncharted Power's Chief Technology Advisor who joined in June of 2020. Bill brings over 25 years of experience in networking technologies, including smart grid, smart city and IoT innovations, including leading product at Sensity Systems. Most recently over the past 6 years, he has worked with over 40 cities across the country on strategies for executing Smart City initiatives around street lights, smart parking, intelligent traffic, cybersecurity/privacy, and the use of digital twins. "The Uncharted System is an infrastructure-first solution that will revolutionize the use of one of the cities' largest and most underutilized pieces of infrastructure: sidewalks and roads," noted Bill. "It is the combination of this disruptive technology and the unrelenting team behind it at Uncharted Power that makes me so excited to join and set this alternative standard for the future of smart cities."

For more information on Uncharted Power, please visit: https://www.u-pwr.co/

About Uncharted Power

Uncharted Power is an award-winning New York-based company founded in 2011 on the belief that reliable access to sustainable infrastructure is a human right. Starting first with energy-generating play products before focusing on industrial power solutions in 2017, Uncharted Power has grown into a cross-industry sustainable infrastructure company that develops platform solutions to bridge the gap between the smart grid and the smart city.

With more than 12 patents and patents pending, and support from investors like Elemental Excelerator, BBG Ventures, Kapor Capital, Disney Accelerator, Backstage Capital, Lingo Ventures, CoPeace, Magic Johnson Enterprises and others, Uncharted Power is making access to sustainable infrastructure a reality for everyone. For more information, please visit https://www.u-pwr.co

SOURCE Uncharted Power