Your first pilot may be closer than you think.
Los Angeles's utilities, energy companies, and industrial players actively partner with climate startups. These are the organizations opening their infrastructure, grids, and customers to new technology.
Southern California Edison
Southern California Edison is an investor-owned utility, not a dedicated accelerator, and functions as a pilot, demonstration, and validation partner. The founder-relevant vehicle is its Emerging Technologies Program and state-funded demonstration projects, through which startups can get technologies assessed, validated, and demonstrated, guided by its published priority maps. Founders route to that program and use CalTestBed and LACI as the structured on-ramps.
Los Angeles Department of Water and Power
LADWP is the largest US municipal utility and, crucially for founders, the owner and funder of the La Kretz Innovation Campus that LACI operates, and a founding partner of LACI. It runs energy-efficiency demonstration and customer-engagement programs on that campus, but startups access incubation, prototyping, pilots, and capital through LACI rather than LADWP directly. It can also be a demonstration counterparty for grid, water, and efficiency solutions.