Adi Hachmon isn’t just another entrepreneur looking for a quick exit. Up until a few years ago, she held one of the most powerful positions of influence in the Israeli economy as Deputy Director of the Budgets Department at the Ministry of Finance, in charge of infrastructure, and as a board member of the Electricity Authority. Today, as vice president and co-founder of power management company nGrid Energy, she is looking to change the system she once managed from within.
nGrid's vision sounds almost unreal: building "the most flexible power plant on the market" without needing a single plot of land or negotiating the bureaucratic maze of statutory approvals. The key lies in AI-based management of a network of power stations distributed across the country. The solution would save Israel from having to build an expensive and cumbersome transmission infrastructure, and at a fraction of the price.
The never-ending chase
The point where the AI revolution and the electric vehicle revolution meet is driving a sharp increase in energy demand. In Israel, where rapid population growth requires constant expansion of infrastructure, this becomes a major strategic challenge. ‘We deal with a ‘prima donna’ called the demand function,’ Hachmon explains metaphorically. ‘She decides how much she needs in the afternoon and how much in the morning; she is seasonal, temperamental, and almost impossible to predict. We find ourselves in constant pursuit, just to adapt production to her pace."
The analogy is to one of the most fascinating and costly structural failures in the Israeli economy: the entire system is built and maintained to meet moments of peak demand which, in fact, happen for only a few hours a year. In order to withstand those moments, the state invests billions in constructing power plants, substations, and transmission lines that are unused for most of the year. "The madness is that more than 50% of the time we use less than 50% of our production and transmission capacity," Hachmon explains.
"Hachmon says the Finance Ministry had a paradoxical saying: ‘The most expensive electricity is the electricity you don’t use during peak hours,’ describing the reality where meeting peak demand requires more polluting energy sources. At those times, the grid must run at full generation capacity, including the oldest, most polluting, and least efficient plants. Even a small reduction in consumption during those hours creates major savings for the economy, and ultimately for all of us. "Our goal was to manage demand,’ Hachmon recalls, "and persuade people to cut back during the most expensive hours. But changing consumer behavior is a slow, difficult process. It only becomes worth people’s while when electric bills are very high."
nGrid Energy's solution is quite different: instead of changing people, it manages on-site battery energy storage units. "Real-time control allows you to manage demand at scale, simply because we don't require people to change their behavior," she explains. The economic principle is almost intuitive: buy and store electricity during off-peak hours when costs are at their lowest, and discharge the battery units during peak hours when prices soar.
Talpiot in the service of energy
What powers nGrid, however, are not batteries themselves, but brains. "Our platform is based on an AI algorithm developed by graduates of Talpiot [the IDF’s elite military-academic technology unit] who are partners in the company," says Hachmon. "The system operates autonomously, processing huge datasets of market prices, weather forecasts, and special events, along with technical data such as battery health and on-site connection limits. Using these variables, the system optimizes profits in real time. As far as the Regulator [at the Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure] is concerned, this is another tool to stimulate the market and influence the demand function."
How does this happen in practice?
"From the customers’ perspective, we offer them discounted electricity, at a discount of over 8%, which is tens or hundreds of thousands of shekels a year. In return, they allow us to place battery energy storage units on their property and control them. Many small and mid-sized business electricity consumers struggle to access discounted power, because there isn’t enough privately supplied electricity available on the grid. Preference is given to large customers, such as major factories, or allocated to small residential users. Another option is for customers to install a unit at their own expense, remain its owner, and get a management fee in addition to the discount."
Once the physical infrastructure is in place, the system's "brain" kicks in. AI predicts the optimum points for unloading and loading times, with the aim of generating maximum arbitrage between the highs and lows of demand. nGrid makes sure to pay customers the promised discount, and pockets the difference created thanks to smart algorithmic management.
Joining forces with Hachmon is a diverse founding team including CEO Omer Krieger, a former EVP at Stratasys, former Trigo VP Hagai Feinberg, CTO Doron Levin, a Talpiot alumnus and co-founder of Wild Biotech, and COO Ori Herman, formerly Cybereason GM with extensive high-tech and public sector management experience. The main investors are the Harel Group led by VP Harel Technology Investments Tomer Goldberg), along with Doron Livnat, Izhar Armony, Yodfat Harel-Buchris, and Meir Adest, a co-founder of SolarEdge Technologies.
The only one in Israel
While nGrid is the first in Israel to operate using this model, companies around the world are already operating with the same method. US-based Base Power, which operates mainly in Texas where the electricity market is particularly volatile, and UK-based Octopus Energy manage and optimize electricity consumption, offering customers a significant discount, and profiting on the difference achieved thanks to smart management.
"We are the only high-tech company with an electricity supplier license, giving us access to the more volatile wholesale market," says Hachmon. "We are also the only electricity supplier in Israel that is a technology company, and not a traditional producer or 'retailer' [which mediates between producers and consumers]. At the Ministry of Finance, when we discussed virtual private suppliers, that's what we had in mind: someone that would succeed in streamlining consumption, and in doing so, the entire system."
So far, nGrid has operated under the radar, yet is already enjoying a $3 million turnover in its first year of commercial activity, (the company received the supplier's license only last March). It currently manages 25 gigawatt-hours a year, plus "very interesting contracts to be announced soon," and aims to reach hundreds of gigabytes to be managed in real time. "It’s the scale of large power plants but without having to own land and go through statutory processes," Hachmon concludes. In this way, the company hopes, it will succeed in moderating the dramatic investments that the Israeli energy sector currently requires.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on April 23, 2026.
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd., 2026.