Switched Source Raises Over $17M to Expand Grid Capacity

Restoring power after a storm can change which lines carry a neighborhood's electricity. Switched Source is building equipment for the uneven loading that can follow that change, giving utilities a way to rebalance distribution circuits while making more use of infrastructure already standing.

The Chicago company announced over $17M in funding on October 13, 2026, led by Cubit Capital. ABB, Emerald Technology Ventures, Red Cedar Ventures, Southern States and Southwire Company participated with other strategic investors. Cofounder and CEO Charles Murray and cofounder and COO Lane Nelson will use the financing to expand manufacturing and testing, support utility deployments across North America and develop additional distribution solutions. The commercial proposition reaches into a utility's capital plan: recover usable capacity while retaining choices about larger upgrades.

How Phase-EQ creates room on an existing circuit

Distribution equipment can reach a constraint even when its workload is unevenly shared. Homes and small businesses commonly draw single-phase power, while the wider feeder has 3 phases. Concentrated charging, heating or rooftop solar can make those differences change through the day. A planner considering the next connection therefore needs to understand where the load sits, as well as how much electricity the circuit carries overall.

Switched Source's Phase-EQ uses power electronics to move power between phases. The device connects alongside the distribution circuit and exchanges real and reactive power, allowing it to respond dynamically to imbalance. Its purpose is to help the utility use the circuit more effectively as local conditions change. That is a specific electrical intervention, with a buying case that depends on the circuit where it is installed.

An EPRI and Ameren modeling project, published in March 2021, explored that dependence using utility feeder data. The researchers found that imbalance varied by location and over time, and they identified circumstances where dynamic balancing could help defer capacity investment. The report also separates simulation results from the field demonstrations needed to extend the evidence. It gives a utility engineer a route into technical evaluation, rather than a universal capacity multiplier to paste into a budget.

That distinction matters commercially. Equipment that relieves a constraint on one feeder still needs a reason to be bought for another. Switched Source's customer conversation starts with identifying that reason, then follows the device through installation and operation. The electrical system decides how much useful room a particular intervention can create.

Manufacturing follows the utility decision

Switched Source reports more than 150,000 operating hours across 12 utility service areas, with active-deployment data showing 10%-25% increases in load-serving capacity. The company also reports a typical purchase-order-to-activation interval of 14-20 weeks. These figures describe its reported experience, with outcomes dependent on the deployment. They make lead time and feeder suitability practical parts of the buyer's evaluation.

A shorter implementation interval has value to a utility facing a changing load forecast. It can put an additional option inside the period before a larger investment is ready, provided the device fits the electrical problem. The decision involves operating requirements, installation and the capacity actually recovered. A timetable in a funding release becomes useful when the supplier can carry it through the customer's process.

Switched Source's company timeline records an expansion to a 20,000-square-foot Chicago operations and production facility in 2025, including medium-voltage factory acceptance testing. The new financing supports more manufacturing and testing capacity and hiring in manufacturing, quality and supply chain. Those functions sit directly behind the promise of delivering equipment that a utility can put into service.

The current careers page also lists production and mechanical engineering opportunities. For a hardware company, that recruiting activity sits close to the product's commercial life: components must arrive, assembled equipment must be tested, and installation teams need a device that matches the agreed specification. The capital now follows the work from an engineer's plan toward a repeatable production operation.

Two founders and several kinds of capital

Murray and Nelson founded Switched Source in 2016 after meeting in a University of Chicago Booth entrepreneurship class, according to the university's account of the company's development. Murray brought energy-storage experience and Nelson a finance background. Their company grew through university support, utility engagement and public programs, giving the current manufacturing effort a history longer than this round's announcement.

That history includes an $8.56M FY2021 SCALEUP award recorded in ARPA-E's report to Congress. The latest release also describes a separate 5-year, $99M project under the Department of Energy's Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnerships program for Southeast storm restoration. Its stated purpose includes rebalancing circuits as feeders are reconfigured. The $99M is project value and should remain separate from the newly announced private financing.

Cubit Capital leads the investment group, with industrial participants joining firms focused on technology commercialization. The presence of those investors establishes who is backing the round; the announcement leaves the precise round series and valuation undisclosed. Keeping that accounting clear allows the operating story to carry its own weight without a larger, misleading funding total.

The planning study reaches the neighborhood

Switched Source brings automated control into a utility's existing distribution assets. The alternatives an engineer considers can include manual phase rebalancing or conductor upgrades, as the EPRI report describes. Selecting among them requires attention to the feeder's topology, changing load and the work involved in deploying each option. The relevant comparison belongs to the site and the operating plan around it.

DevCuration's reporting on Torch Systems' outdoor asset intelligence and Subeca's flexible water metering follows other ways utilities are investing in the assets they already operate. Switched Source's contribution is specifically electrical: changing how load is carried across the phases of a distribution circuit.

For a utility evaluating Phase-EQ, buying it also begins a longer evaluation of how the circuit behaves as load changes. The useful record develops through normal operation and through reconfiguration during disruption. Manufacturing more devices can put Switched Source into more of those decisions, where the planner who found spare capacity this year may need a different answer for the same neighborhood later.