The Torus Mini Power Plant. Having your cake and eating it too.

Torus CEO Nate Walkingshaw shares his thoughts on the current state of our electrical grid and how new energy technology can power our lives more reliably and affordably. 

This entire article is intended to change the narrative of what is possible if you placed the business owner and the homeowner in charge of their own energy storage, generation and use then partnered with the utility to expand and stabilize the grid.

What happened: Our customers did it! The Torus Mini Power Plant empowered them to become their own utility. But even cooler, they’re helping their neighbors and friendly neighborhood grid operators expand and be more resilient. We can do this faster and more efficiently than any modern day solution. Let’s go!

1. Anyone can generate, store, and use their own power right in their backyard, driveway, parking lot, or rooftop. Just like a large power plant, you can enjoy the same benefits. The Torus innovation allows you to connect all these elements together, creating a reverse utility to help your neighbors and the broader grid expand.
2. From an engineering perspective, this is far more efficient than having power transported to you from hundreds of miles away. It’s also much more efficient to connect the mini power plants in that area and then link them to the substation for power distribution, rather than bringing in power from distant locations.
3. The Torus Mini Power plant offers a multitude of benefits, including cost savings, emergency backup, and the ability to operate independently of the grid. Once your building or home is offset and protected, it starts monitoring the grid much ( like a power plant :). It can provide power back to the grid to help stabilize it or, in some cases, prevent brownouts, or rolling blackouts.
4. Federal and utility programs have made this affordable through massive incentive programs that essentially allow businesses and homeowners to obtain energy storage at discounts of nearly 50% to 80%.
5. What we are not: We are not a solar company. What we are: We are a U.S.-based energy storage manufacturer. We have built an energy management platform that helps expand the United States grid and complies with national grid standards (IEEE 2030.5, IEEE 1547). The Torus platform allows businesses and homeowners to turn their purchased assets into grid-assisting devices after they have ensured that their family or business is protected. In most cases, these products can also generate revenue.
6. Cyber protection is built into the foundation of our products. One of the major concerns today is protecting a nation’s grid, as well as your home or business, from vulnerabilities introduced by third-party hardware and software. To address this, we’ve developed an IoT device and software security platform called Gridstar. This platform can command and control nearly any third-party hardware, including devices commonly known as inverters, batteries, EV chargers, HVAC thermostats, and variable frequency drives. Whether it’s a single device or thousands, Gridstar ensures secure and efficient operation.
7. A Torus system insulates homeowners and businesses from unplanned rate escalations and both planned and unplanned outages. Furthermore, widespread adoption of our technology not only benefits individual users but also helps grid operators maintain lower rates for everyone over time.
8. We conduct live unplanned or planned demand response events multiple times per week to assist utilities with frequency regulation support, and our customers never feel the impacts. However, they do get to see their Torus Mini Plant assisting the grid, which feels pretty amazing!
9. As a society, we often lack sufficient education about managing our energy effectively. The main benefit of Torus is its educational impact. Within the first 24 hours of onboarding, you will start to live and operate differently, with minimal changes to your behavior. In fact, we have observed that large groups of users become quite passionate about their Torus Powered Score, eagerly sharing their experiences with colleagues, family members, and friends.
10. Why are we so different? We’ve consolidated all the hard things into one easy-to-deploy package. That’s it!For the more technical folks: we’ve tackled the biggest pain points head-on. We started with the installers, focusing on ease of installation (90-minute installation), then went hard in the paint with a seamless user experience design to educate businesses and homeowners about solving the two biggest issues — costs and stable power. The system connects a hardware ecosystem that includes a mini-transformer, mini-substation, renewable production capabilities, energy storage, off-grid capabilities, rapid shutdown features, and a millisecond-for-millisecond IoT-managed piece of grid-compliant hardware. This in turn becomes a trusted device on the grid. For the finishing touches, we wrapped everything in a gluttony of cyber and safety systems to ensure acceptance by homeowners, businesses, and the grid. (Woof! That’s a mouthful.)

It’s as compact and bada** as Mike Tyson’s 32–0 run in the ’80s and ’90s. Sizing-wise, it’s about the size of an air conditioning unit. It is dead silent and never stops pumping out the kWhs.

This powerhouse comes with off-grid capabilities built-in, tailored for each location and planned for future expansions. You’ll have enough energy storage to run off-grid on most days. No need for solar, wind, or hydro power — though it’s ready to harness all three right out of the box, and almost all customers either integrate it with existing setups or purchase new ones.

Alternatively, you can use this for energy arbitrage or to optimize time-of-use rates to save money and provide emergency backup. Your friendly neighborhood grid operator loves this idea because you draw from the grid during low-demand, low-rate periods and then supply it back to the grid at peak demands and peak pricing, enhancing grid capability and keeping costs lower for everyone.

Don’t worry about Big Brother. Our software ensures there is a partnership between you and the grid, so there’s no need to fret over utilities controlling your home or business hardware. We ensure you have enough excess to assist the grid while keeping your home or business completely powered.

Bringing it home. As we chart a path towards a sustainable and resilient future, the Torus Mini Power Plant stands as a beacon of innovation and empowerment. It’s not just about energy independence; it’s about forging a community of proactive energy citizens who play a pivotal role in shaping their own energy futures and contributing to a robust national grid.

By embracing the Torus Mini Power Plant, each homeowner and business owner doesn’t just become an energy user; they become an integral part of a larger movement. A movement that champions sustainability, reliability, and community spirit. Together, we’re not just facing down the energy challenges of today — we’re setting the foundations for a smarter, more sustainable tomorrow.

Let’s continue to transform every rooftop and every lot into an energy storage solution, not just for ourselves but for our communities. Because when we power our world with Torus, we’re not just generating energy — we’re generating possibilities. Join us on this journey. The future is not just bright; it’s powered by you and Torus.

All the best

Nate

PS: Feels so good to start writing again. I think about it every day. There are so many moments along the creation of this company that I wished all of you could witness it. There have been multiple times I sit and watch our team navigate the hardest and most complex math and engineering problems I have ever witnessed. The depth and complexity of these frameworks, tools, process’ programming languages to build a micro-utility company has been so challenging but so rewarding.

Thank you to the Team, Gil and my Family for allowing us the opportunity to work on such a hard problem.