US weather technology company Climavision has partnered with Western Weather Group (WWG) to feed readings from utilities’ own weather stations into its forecast models. The deal covers utilities that are customers of both companies.
The companies announced the partnership on 12 November 2026. Climavision, based in Louisville, Kentucky, runs its own weather radars and sells forecasts. WWG, based in Chico, California, builds and looks after weather stations for electric and gas utilities.
For utilities that use both services, Climavision’s privately run radars and the utility’s own ground stations will now feed a single forecast. The companies say this gives each utility a much more local view of conditions across its service area.
Stations On Utility Equipment
WWG plans each station, chooses where it goes, puts it up and keeps it running. The utilities pay for and own the hardware, which is fixed to power poles, substations and hard-to-reach high ground along their networks.
The company says it has installed more than 8,000 industrial-grade stations for more than 30 US utilities. Its customers include investor-owned utilities, which are private companies run for shareholders, along with member-owned cooperatives and city-run providers. Some of the stations WWG maintains were run by those utilities before it took them on.
Until now, each station mainly logged current conditions at its own spot. Through the partnership, those readings will also flow into Climavision’s forecast model with its radar data, helping to project conditions across a utility’s full territory.
Utilities sometimes switch off power in dry, windy weather to cut the risk of their lines sparking wildfires, a step known as a public safety power shutoff. WWG calibrates every station it maintains once a year. The companies say this means the wind and humidity readings behind each shutoff can be traced and checked if regulators review it later.
Gaps In Federal Radar Coverage
To track storms, the US relies on NEXRAD (Next Generation Weather Radar), a federal network run by the National Weather Service with the Federal Aviation Administration and the US Air Force. As of May 2026, it had 158 radars, according to the Congressional Research Service. Climavision says federal agencies also run about 950 surface weather stations.
Radar beams climb higher the further they travel, partly because the Earth curves away beneath them. Far from a radar site, the beam passes over weather near the ground. A 2020 report to Congress from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) treated 6,000 feet above ground as the cut-off for good coverage. It said the beam reaches that height about 71 miles from the radar.
Local power lines typically run around 40 feet up, far below that. A 2021 report from a NOAA advisory board estimated that about 70% of the western US was unobserved below one kilometre, or about 3,300 feet.
Climavision operates its own radars to fill those gaps. It said its network had 31 radars across 15 states in September 2026, and the company now says it spans 16 states, including Florida, Minnesota and Texas.
How The Combined Forecast Works
In the combined setup, Climavision’s radars are designed to watch the lower air that federal beams miss far from their sites. A utility’s WWG stations add measurements taken at ground level. Both feed Climavision’s High Resolution forecasting system.
That system splits the whole country into two-kilometre squares and refreshes its forecast hourly, looking as far as seven days ahead. According to Climavision, no other public or commercial forecast has used this combination before.
Forecasts three to five days out matter most for planning, the companies say, because that is when utilities move crews into place and borrow workers from other utilities, a practice called mutual assistance. Once a storm arrives, live station readings can help control rooms send crews where they are needed.
Station data can also reveal which parts of a network face the harshest weather and so guide where a utility spends on upgrades, according to the partners. Because the stations already sit on utility equipment, they add coverage in rugged terrain without any new building work.
“Utilities are building weather tech stacks because a regional forecast cannot tell them what to do on their own system,” said Chris Goode, chief executive and co-founder of Climavision. He said feeding radar, other low-level readings and a utility’s own sensors into one model lets utilities move crews sooner and base shutoff decisions on measured data.
CenterPoint Runs The Setup In Houston
The companies have already used the setup with CenterPoint Energy, which supplies power in the Houston area. CenterPoint began installing its own weather stations in April 2025 under its Greater Houston Resiliency Initiative. The utility launched that programme in July 2024 after Hurricane Beryl left 2.2 million customers without power, and said it would put up 100 stations across Greater Houston.
According to Climavision and WWG, CenterPoint started in 2025 with 150 WWG-built stations feeding Climavision’s model alongside its radar data. “The utility ends up with a prediction that has its own instruments behind it,” said Steve Miller, chief strategy officer at WWG.
The companies point to a storm in October 2025 as an example. They say CenterPoint restored power to 95% of affected customers once a second wave of weather had passed. The model had flagged the threat a week before, according to the partners. CenterPoint then started close monitoring five days out and opened its emergency operations centre two days after that.
A Wider Push Into Grid Weather
The deal follows Climavision’s move in September 2026 to sell its radar data and forecasts to AI data centre operators. Goode said at the time that the forecasts could help data centres avoid being told to cut power use when weather strains the grid.
The Rise Fund, part of private equity firm TPG, invested $100M in Climavision in 2021. The fund backs companies that aim for a social or environmental benefit as well as a financial return.
Other sensor and network firms also sell into utility grids. Finnish wireless company Wirepas, for example, says 12 million smart meter connections in India run on its technology.
The partnership joins two sources of weather data in one forecast: Climavision’s low-level radar and the ground stations utilities already own. For customers of both companies, those station readings now feed forecasts across a utility’s territory, and CenterPoint in Houston is the only utility named so far.
