Boston, Dec. 10, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) —
- Full transparency and efficient interconnection for project developers and utilities: The new IGP application gives a clear view at the earliest stage of the interconnection process, reducing effort and costs for both sides while ensuring utilities receive more qualified, less speculative requests for faster studies
- Beyond traditional hosting capacity maps: “Grid Connection Navigator” (GCN) reinvents hosting capacity maps and provides near-real-time automated updates, advanced time-series results, power-flow based calculations in one single, intuitive interface
- Reliable project planning: Developers can evaluate available grid capacity, identify suitable sites, and estimate connection costs more accurately
- The world’s first rollout of the Grid Connection Navigator is taking place with a US-utility
Boston, 12/10/2025 – envelio, Europe’s leading smart grid software provider, is launching its new Grid Connection Navigator (GCN) application in the North American market. This digital tool streamlines the first step of the interconnection process. Users can independently evaluate available grid capacity, identify suitable sites, and estimate projected connection costs. Utilities benefit from reduced manual efforts and higher-quality connection requests. The new tool complements envelio’s existing interconnection applications, “Grid Connection Study” and “Online Connection Check”.
As DERs (distributed energy resources), electrification, and large loads expand rapidly, the interconnection process and queues often become a bottleneck. In many cases, the process is complex and lacks transparency: developers and companies often cannot determine in advance whether a site is technically and commercially feasible. This can lead to delays, higher costs, and less effective planning. Meanwhile, utilities must review a large number of incomplete or speculative interconnection requests. With the Grid Connection Navigator, envelio has developed a tool that frees up valuable time and personnel resources on both sides.
Win-win in grid interconnection: transparency for developers, efficiency for utilities
Project developers benefit from a much more transparent interconnection-planning process. They can check available grid capacity, identify feasible locations, and calculate projected connection costs in advance. This reduces planning effort while saving time and money. Utilities benefit from receiving more realistic, well-founded, and easier-to-process requests. This enables faster, more targeted interconnection decisions while keeping critical staff resources available for other tasks.
“Hosting capacity maps are the right tool — but a new approach is needed to keep pace with today’s multiple challenges like load growth and flexibility to name a few.,” says Luigi Montana, CEO of envelio Inc. “With the Grid Connection Navigator, we’re taking that next step. Instead of a static map, we provide an interactive, data-driven view of the grid powered by a true load-flow–based algorithm without approximations or heuristics. This gives developers the right information at the very beginning of their planning, while helping utilities focus their resources on requests that are genuinely feasible. The result is greater operational and financial flexibility — and ultimately a faster path to deploying DERs, EV charging infrastructure, and large loads.”
Grid Connection Navigator enables a fully digital connection process
At the heart of the digital tool lies an interactive grid-capacity map. GCN users can evaluate available capacity before submitting a request, identify suitable locations, and access indicative cost calculations. Utilities can embed the Navigator directly into the self-service area of their website, allowing customers to use it immediately without logging in.
Unlike traditional hosting capacity maps, the Grid Connection Navigator is powered by continuously updated data. Instead of annual or infrequent refreshes, it automatically updates underlying calculations, including power-flow–based hosting capacity assessments, giving users near-real-time, highly accurate visibility into grid conditions. The tool also integrates seasonal and time-series–based hosting capacities, providing a clearer view of when capacity is available. This granularity is essential for assessing battery storage projects and flexible interconnections, where timing and variability are critical to technical and economic feasibility.
envelio expands U.S. presence
Last year, envelio introduced its market-leading smart grid software, the Intelligent Grid Platform (IGP), to the U.S. market. Less than twelve months later, a U.S. utility became the first customer worldwide to deploy the Grid Connection Navigator, confirming envelio’s successful entry into the U.S. market. Several other U.S. utilities have already shown interest, highlighting envelio’s dedication to providing intelligent solutions to support grid operators worldwide in planning, operating and transforming electric distribution grids.
Further information and details about the IGP and the Grid Connection Navigator can be found here.
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About envelio Inc.:
envelio Inc. was founded in Boston in May 2024 to drive the U.S. energy transition through smart grid software. With its proprietary Intelligent Grid Platform, the cleantech company offers its customers a transparent insight into actual grid operations and a variety of tools for resilient grid planning. The digital twin enables grid operators to optimize processes through automation and digitization, address grid vulnerabilities, visualize and plan hosting capacity and automate grid connections. More than 60 utilities have now adopted and scaled the Intelligent Grid Platform (IGP), including E.ON, which operates the largest distribution grid in Europe. envelio Inc. is a spin-off of the award-winning German company envelio GmbH, which was founded in 2017 by five co-founders from RWTH Aachen University and is based in Cologne, Germany.
About the Intelligent Grid Platform (IGP):
envelio’s Intelligent Grid Platform (IGP) is a comprehensive software solution for the efficient planning and operational management of power grids. It provides a digital twin that processes, harmonizes, and visualizes existing data. As the need for grid investment and complexity increases amid a growing number of interconnections, the platform’s holistic approach ensures that grid data and planning drive effective investments, enhance grid reliability, and enable scalable processes. Thanks to the modular architecture of the award-winning software, it adapts to grid operators of all sizes, making it a unique solution to the challenges of decentralized energy supply and distribution grid expansion. envelio’s IGP empowers grid operators to optimize and automate processes, laying the foundation for a rapid and decentralized global energy transition.
- envelio expands Intelligent Grid Platform (IGP) with new “Grid Connection Navigator” (press release)
- Grid Connection Navigator, Online Connection Check and Grid Connection Study- how the IGP apps for grid connection work together