Insurance provider Understory gets into renewable energy following $15M Series A | TechCrunch

In the year 2014, Understory Co-founder and CEO Alex Kubicek was on a mission Establishment of a network of ground level weather stations Monitoring the weather in real time and forecasting needs, for example, in terms of the availability of resources in an area after or during a storm.

At the time, Kubicek, along with Brian Dow, built weather stations with the goal of adding 10 to 15 minutes to thunderstorm or tornado warnings. However, they found that most of the data used to forecast the weather was from the 1980s.

“We needed a better weather data set, and that’s when I approached Brian Dow and started working on building the weather station,” Kubicek told TechCrunch. “It’s a solid-state measurement that measures wind, rain, and hail 125,000 times a second, as well as temperature, pressure, and humidity. This gives us a really deep, detailed understanding of what’s happening on the ground.”

Over the next eight years, Madison, Wisconsin-based Understory installed weather stations called Dots around the world, collecting as much data as possible. It also raised nearly $40 million in funding, including a $1.9 million seed round led by True Ventures in 2014.

With all that data, the company was able to build global catastrophe models to help it better understand the risk of individual properties. Those models were validated by its reinsurance partners, who told Understory it should sell this set of historical data as a software-as-a-service or data service product, Kubicek said.

However, Kubicek and Dow had bigger plans. During that time, they met Neil Irwin, a senior executive at one of the world’s leading insurance brokers, and decided to form their own insurance company.

Kubicek said Irvine came on as co-founder and international president to help him learn about the insurance industry and “steer Understory into this really exciting next phase.”

Understory began offering insurance that is tailored to address the growing threat of severe weather risk, often referred to as insure. Parametric InsuranceFor example, it launched the Dealers Open Lot Insurance solution, which provides risk management for US auto dealers. Since then it has provided protection for dealer inventory at nearly 1,000 locations in the United States.

By notifying auto dealerships in advance, Understory has been able to prevent customers from losing millions of dollars. Irwin said one customer in particular was able to reduce hail damage to cars from $110 million to $50 million, just by notifying them in advance.

“In the audit world, we’re not just helping people cope with climate risk, although that is huge,” Irwin said. “We’ve been able to avert 10 major incidents and about $3 million in actual losses that would have occurred.”

Understory has seen 500% year-over-year growth over the past year. And now it’s moving in a new direction, launching a product focused on the renewable energy sector. It’s doing so with a new $15 million round of Series A capital co-led by True Ventures and Prelude Ventures.

Its proprietary risk mitigation technology helps solar farms, for example, save 50% on hail repair costs by leveraging massive buying power, Kubicek said. With some of its models able to predict weather events with as little as 45 minutes of notice, solar farm operators can have time to position or move panels that deflect hail by changing the angle of impact.

He said that with the right approach a $10 million loss can be turned into a $5 million loss, or even a $2.5 million loss can be turned into a $500,000 loss.

“The current solar industry is really in trouble right now,” Kubicek said. “A lot of these contracts are being canceled because you’re trying to build these big solar projects, those are the only areas where the sky is literally trying to kill you. With our technology, we’re able to mitigate that risk.”