UNSW Founders-Backed Gridsight and RTS@UNSW Win 2026 AFR Energy Awards

Gridsight, a start-up backed by UNSW Founders, won the 2026 AFR Energy Award for wellbeing, health and safety, and the Real Time Simulations Laboratory at UNSW won the award for innovation, EIN Presswire reported on October 19, 2026. Gridsight builds a real-time digital twin of electricity distribution networks.

Gridsight's Award and Its Fault Detection Work

Gridsight gives electricity distributors a real-time digital twin of their network, turning data into a single, accurate picture of grid capacity and constraints. Its AFR Energy Award for wellbeing, health and safety relates to its ability to use AI to analyse the grid at scale and spot faults before they hurt anyone. It crunches vast amounts of data from households and poles and wires, to find anomalies and autonomously dispatch crews to precise locations to fix faults.

UNSW Director of Entrepreneurship David Burt congratulated Gridsight on its success. "Gridsight started with great founders tackling a difficult technical problem, and they've turned that into product trusted by major electricity networks around the world," he said. "That journey from an idea at UNSW to now being critical infrastructure at global scale is exactly what university entrepreneurship can create."

Gridsight raised $26 million in Series B financing led by Insight Partners, with participation from Galvanize and existing investors, citybiz reported on September 3, 2026. The Sydney-based AI grid intelligence firm will use the funds to expand its platform in the U.S. and Australia, helping utilities unlock unused grid capacity, ESG Today reported on September 2, 2026.

UNSW Founders' Accelerator and Global Programs

According to akta.pro company records, UNSW Founders is the University of New South Wales' university-affiliated accelerator and entrepreneurship program, founded in 2017 and based in Sydney. The program launched its 2026 10x Accelerator with three specialized streams (Health, Climate, All Industries), offering a $100,000 SAFE investment per selected startup and 10 weeks of intensive support. It hosted the Global Launchpads Summit at UNSW Sydney in February 2026 to build international commercialization corridors targeting USA, China, India, and Europe, with a stated ambition to support 100 startups with global expansion pathways. The same records show 140+ companies have completed accelerator programs since 2018, with $270 million+ raised by alumni post-graduation and $1 billion+ in combined enterprise value generated by graduates.

UNSW Founders' Recent Program Launches

UNSW Founders launched its 2026 10x Accelerator program in May 2026, offering 10 weeks of intensive support with a $100,000 SAFE investment per selected startup, alongside expert coaching and access to Australia's R&D network, Startup Daily reported. UNSW Founders also launched Impact X in May 2026, a free 10-week health pre-accelerator for women and diverse founders across New South Wales, Dynamic Business reported. In September 2026, Heidi, SiteHive, The Laundry Lady, and UNSW Founders were among 15 winners at the Startup Daily Best in Tech Awards 2026, where Heidi won two awards including Scaleup of the Year and AI Gamechanger, Startup Daily reported.

RTS@UNSW's Industry Partnerships

RTS@UNSW worked with AGL to demonstrate and validate the performance of its grid-forming battery energy storage system in Broken Hill. It also developed a scaled-down platform for Potentia Energy to test the control of its battery energy storage system under realistic network conditions. UNSW Sydney Associate Professor in Energy Systems Georgios Konstantinou, who leads the lab, said the award was recognition of work and effort over the past decade. "It's our capacity and ability to be able to test real equipment in the simulation loop that allows us to create the many iterations and conditions that can be experienced in the network but cannot be tested in real life," he said.