Today’s episode guest, Wenbo Shi, goes Deep with me on how he’s built his Boston-based energy startup, including detailed answers on the how, when, why and who of his fundraising strategy like I’ve rarely gotten into with a guest. Wenbo honed his interest in solar and decarbonization during an intensive academic journey stretching from undergraduate studies at Xi'an Jiaotong University in Xi'an to a Ph.D. from UCLA and post-doctoral work at Harvard. He vowed early on to NOT be in the power sector; I get him to talk about why he ultimately realized he couldn’t avoid it.

At both UCLA and Harvard, he researched microgrid and smart grid management and published more than 20 peer-reviewed papers, which have received more than 1,000 citations. Two of those papers ranked among the most popular articles ever published in IEEE, the world's largest technical professional organization. So you can trust me when I say that today’s guest is a smart grid expert!

Wenbo embarked on an entrepreneurial path in 2019 after completing his Harvard fellowship. His company, Singularity Energy, is a Software-as-a-Service platform that reports on carbon emissions for the electricity grid, and counts major utilities and consumer brands like Eversource and Sense as clients.  

Boston-base Singularity uses advanced machine learning to help grid operators quantify their carbon footprints. It analyzes and predicts carbon emissions changes and the impacts of decarbonization measures so customers can time their energy use and trim their carbon footprints.

In today's podcast, Wenbo explains how Singularity evolved to solve this carbon data problem and how leveraging that data to inform better decisions is the most direct path to decarbonization. This insightful episode is full of memorable takeaways that will act as connective tissue for problems you're solving.

If you want to connect with today's guest, you’ll find links to his contact info in the show notes on the blog at https://mysuncast.com/suncast-episodes/.

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