Osmose and Neara Partner to Help Utilities Strengthen Transmission and Distribution Infrastructure with AI-Powered Data Insights

Osmose and Neara are teaming up to enable utilities like CenterPoint Energy to evaluate asset risk with greater precision and improve underlying network data quality and utilization.

ATLANTA, March 20, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Osmose, the leading provider of utility infrastructure asset assessment, restoration, and life extension solutions, and Neara, an AI-powered predictive modeling platform for utility networks, have announced a strategic partnership to help utilities better assess risk, improve data accuracy, and strengthen power grids. This collaboration will enable utilities like CenterPoint Energy to prioritize asset upgrades with greater precision and efficiency.

By combining Osmose's deep expertise in field data collection, structural analysis, and restoration solutions with Neara's advanced AI modeling, the partnership will address longstanding data quality challenges that often limit effective decision-making. Many utilities struggle with incomplete or outdated network data, leading to premature replacements or missed opportunities for cost-effective reinforcement. This joint solution enhances data accuracy, helping utilities optimize restoration efforts, reduce costs, and improve resiliency.

"By integrating Neara's AI-driven modeling with our industry-leading field services, we're giving utilities a powerful tool to make smarter, more data-driven decisions," said Mike Adams, CEO of Osmose. "Accurate asset data is the foundation for a resilient grid, and this partnership provides the precision needed to maximize reliability and performance."

The collaboration will focus on several key challenges in utility infrastructure management:

• Enhancing data accuracy – Osmose's field teams collect and verify asset conditions on-site, ensuring utilities have the most reliable and precise structural data available. Neara's AI platform then processes and refines this data, automatically correcting and enhancing GIS records. By combining Osmose's hands-on expertise with Neara's AI-driven insights, utilities gain a clearer and more actionable understanding of their network.
  
  
• Improving risk-based decision-making – Osmose's structural analysis and degradation models provide deep insights into asset condition and performance. Neara enhances these insights by applying predictive analytics, helping utilities quantify risk and prioritize action. Together, they enable utilities to determine which assets require immediate restoration, which can be reinforced or upgraded, and which should be replaced—eliminating costly guesswork.
  
  
• Optimizing restoration strategies – Osmose's field-verified assessments allow utilities to target restoration and reinforcement efforts with precision. Neara's modeling further refines this process by force-ranking risk-adjusted priorities across the network. This ensures that utilities make the most cost-effective and impactful restoration decisions, strengthening infrastructure while minimizing unnecessary replacements.

"Restoration, reinforcement, and structure replacement all play key roles in strengthening distribution infrastructure," said Jack Curtis, Chief Commercial Officer at Neara. "But the most effective decision-making starts with clean, accurate data. By integrating Osmose's field expertise into our platform, we're helping utilities like CenterPoint Energy improve resiliency while optimizing costs."

CenterPoint Energy is already using the partnership's tools to enhance its storm preparedness and improve network reliability.

"At CenterPoint Energy, we are focused every day on building the most resilient coastal grid in the nation and increasing the resiliency of the communities we are privileged to serve," said Eric Easton, VP of Grid Transformation at CenterPoint Energy. "As we work to leverage technology to deliver better outcomes for our customers, we're continuing to enhance our advanced modeling capabilities, which includes collaborating with cutting-edge technology providers like Neara and Osmose to leverage data from both site-specific field analysis and LiDAR-based modeling to optimize the accuracy of individual asset analysis as well as the efficiency of our whole system modeling."

This partnership helps utilities move beyond traditional inspection cycles and embrace a more proactive, data-driven approach. The benefits include:

• Up to 70% cost savings by reinforcing rather than replacing high-risk assets;
• Up to 80% faster restoration, minimizing disruptions and improving reliability; and
• 25% more accurate asset prioritization, ensuring the most critical upgrades happen first

By continuously updating asset data through field inspections and AI-driven modeling, utilities can stay ahead of potential failures and ensure their networks are stronger, safer, and more reliable.

About Osmose Utilities Services, Inc.
Founded in 1934, Osmose is the market-leading provider of critical above-grade and below-grade electric transmission and distribution asset assessment, evaluation, and restoration for electric utilities, telecommunications companies, and renewable energy generators in the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand.  Headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, the company employs more than 4,000 people. Osmose's field technicians, professional engineers, scientists, and corrosion experts utilize their expertise to identify and solve issues to make utility infrastructure safer, longer lasting, and more resilient while lowering the total cost of ownership. Osmose is a portfolio company of EQT Infrastructure. Learn more at https://www.osmose.com/.

About Neara
Neara's AI-assisted predictive modeling software helps infrastructure owners drive critical proactive decisions by conducting precise analyses in hours and days that would otherwise take months or years in the field. Network-wide simulation analyses reveal how assets behave in real-world environments during any scenario — empowering better, faster, more cost-effective decisions. The model supports end-to-end network governance, from routine operational decisions to emergency scenarios and major grid-hardening investments — without verification from manual surveys. Neara's technology has modeled >1.5 million square miles of global network territory featuring ~10 million assets, across four continents from California to Ireland and Australia. Neara's utility customers identify outage risks 9x faster, restore power 3x faster, and save thousands of field visits per year. More information is available at www.neara.com.

About CenterPoint Energy
As the only investor-owned electric and gas utility based in Texas, CenterPoint Energy, Inc. (NYSE: CNP) is an energy delivery company with electric transmission and distribution, power generation and natural gas distribution operations that serve more than 7 million metered customers in Indiana, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Ohio and Texas. With approximately 9,000 employees, CenterPoint Energy and its predecessor companies have been in business for more than 150 years. For more information, visit CenterPointEnergy.com.

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SOURCE Neara