DePIN x Weather Intelligence

Hi - welcome back to DePIN Snacks! Starting today, we’re experimenting with a new format: each week, we’ll cover a recent web2 fundraise and explore how DePIN can enable superior products.

Today’s topic: weather intelligence. 

Last week, Perry Weather announced a $15m Series B for its enterprise-focused weather intelligence and safety platform. The offering has four components:

1. Perry’s installers come to your field/park/stadium and deploy a professional-grade weather sensor + outdoor warning system.

2. Perry uses the data collected from your device as well as third-party data to detect extreme weather events, i.e. lightning strikes and heat waves.

3. In case of a weather event, Perry sends alerts to your staff and to your integrated software platforms, e.g. fleet management & resource planning.

4. Perry’s team of professional meteorologists are on-call 24/7 to answer customer questions about weather conditions and forecasting.

Perry serves 1,500+ organizations including major sports leagues (NFL/MLB/PGA), universities (USC/A&M/Loyola), country clubs, construction sites, etc. Customers are primarily driven by safety and compliance concerns. With climate change creating more frequent extreme weather events, regulators are beginning to hold institutions to account for the weather-related safety conditions of the people they oversee. In July, the Biden administration proposed the first-ever federal heat safety standard to protect 36 million US workers from injuries related to excessive heat exposure. States like California and Kentucky recently enacted similar rules for protecting school athletes. As regulations go into effect and shift liability onto institutions, commercial insurers may begin demanding compliance with safety standards via third-party vendors like Perry.

What does the hardware do? It measures temperature and heat index; precipitation and humidity; windspeed and direction; and air quality. It has a 3.5-inch globe sensor to measure Wet Bulb Globe Temperature (WBGT), a metric that accounts for the effects of sunlight and is increasingly being used to determine excessive heat risks. The device also has an outdoor alert system, i.e. strobe light and sirens, so that people nearby are notified of extreme weather even if cellular networks fail. Each device costs $10-15k.

There is no lightning detection sensor in the devices. Instead, they tap into the US National Lightning Detection Network (NLDN) that counts ~100 base stations across the country which detects lightning strikes with 95% detection rate and 100m accuracy. Interestingly, the NLDN is operated by a publicly-traded Finnish company, Vaisala, valued at a market cap of $1.5B.

Related DePIN Opportunities: 

• A low-latency lightning detection network. The current best solution takes 12-15 seconds from the time of the strike to alert delivery. A DePIN-powered network could, for example, use Helium’s IoT/LoRa network to deliver lightning alerts in less than half the time. Distributing alerts through a decentralized CDN rather than a centralized command center removes the reliance on a single-point-of-failure. The question is: does getting alerts 3-6s vs 12-15s after a strike make a difference to customers?

• A low-cost weather data API. Today, Perry charges its customers $15k+/yr in software licensing fees to use its weather intelligence platform (on top of the cost of hardware), while Vaisala charges developers $10k+/yr to access data on lightning strikes and road conditions. A DePIN-powered network could lower the costs for developers to access weather data while subsidizing the costs of hardware for station-owners. The question is: is the market for weather data big enough to generate meaningful subsidies for station-owners?

• A platform for independent meteorologists. A key selling-point for Perry’s customers is being able to access their in-house team of meteorologists for ad-hoc questions 24/7 (Perry promises a 20-minute response time). While there is clearly demand for advice from trusted weather experts, there’s few paths today for independent meteorologists to make a living. A DePIN-powered platform could aggregate demand for top meteorologists while providing them with the data and tools they need to do their jobs. The question is: can you retain the best meteorological talent on the platform long-term?

DePINs like WeatherXM, Raad, SkyX and Weatherflow are already building towards different versions of this vision. If you’re interested in building and/or contributing to decentralized weather detection networks, reach out to me on telegram at salgala 🌎️