There’s no two ways about it: the US power grid is in poor shape.
Wildfires, floods, and hurricanes continue to harry electric utilities and take down grid infrastructure, all while the country is rushing frantically to build out additional capacity to meet the energy demands of the AI craze.
How can power providers expand and build resilience against extreme weather shocks at the same time — without blowing the bank?
Getting access to better data and risk modeling would be a good start.
Rhizome is a pioneer in the buzzy grid resilience tech market, and is already working with a clutch of big-name utilities to help them analyze and guard against climate-related risk.
On this episode, the company’s CEO and Co-Founder — Mishal Thadani — takes us through his journey from wind and solar energy to the resilience space, and offers his perspectives on one of the hottest niches in adaptation tech today.
He also shares stories from the field: from Texas utilities swapping wooden poles for steel to Northeast operators raising substations above floodwaters.
He then reveals what’s driving utilities to finally treat resilience as a core business function, and how his company is helping them stretch billions in adaptation spending further.
🔗 Learn more about Rhizome HERE
🔗 Check out Rhizome’s 2025 Wildfire Investment Snapshot HERE
Listen below, download from the Podcasts page on Climate Proof, or tune in via Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
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We talk about:
👉 Mishal’s journey from oil major BP’s wind energy operation, to a solar start-up, and then into grid resilience
👉 Why Texas’s 2021 Winter Storm Uri was a personal and professional turning point
👉 How Rhizome uses geospatial mapping, grid reliability data, and machine learning techniques to help utilities identify vulnerable assets and optimize resilience investments
👉 Regional trends in utility adaptation — from steel and composite poles on the Gulf Coast, to flood-proofed substations in the Northeast
👉 How utilities justify adaptation investments to regulators and the growing importance of quantifying the “value of resilience”
Thanks for listening!
Louie Woodall
Editor
