Neara acquires Zepben to deliver integrated physical and electrical digital twin capabilities

Integrating electrical modelling into Neara’s existing platform capabilities, including physical and mechanical risk assessments and financial risk trade-off analysis, adds a new layer of depth to the decision-making process at the individual asset layer and network level.

This delivers a more accurate understanding of utility networks and establishes the foundation for informed, evidence-based investments across reliability, resiliency, affordability and risk mitigation. Neara’s integrated digital twin supports customer defensibility as industry regulation and scrutiny rise, allowing every decision to be traced to both the physical and electrical calculations that produced it. 

Incorporating electrical modelling functions into Neara’s core platform will enhance Neara’s transformative impact across global infrastructure networks, opening a pathway to engage new customers and partners for joint initiatives. Extended platform capabilities will enable deeper integration opportunities and provide an innovative value-add to electrical simulation solution partners.  

The acquisition supports growing demand for combined physical and electrical capabilities as data aggregation and connection remain major bottlenecks for utilities globally. Once integrated, Neara’s overarching functionalities will expand the depth of problems that can be solved for infrastructure operators, including: 

• Constraint forecasting: Overlay demand growth, DER uptake and connection queues, including major loads like data centres, to anticipate where and when the current network will be strained, helping utilities target investment to reduce outage risk and avoid premature spending.
• Planned outage management: Bring outage planning, approvals and customer-notification integrations together to coordinate planned works, identify affected customers and reduce the risk of National Energy Customer Framework (NECF) breaches.
• End-to-end public capacity map: Automated end-to-end electrical and physical design checks to accelerate data centre builds and other interconnection requests, including renewables. 
• Network Model Management with CIM-based Solution: Turn utility source data into vendor-agnostic, ready-to-use CIM models on demand, with self-service model creation and two-way integration capturing as-built updates, as-operated status changes, and as-planned projects in one central network modelling platform.

Neara’s Chief Strategy Officer Karamvir Singh said on the acquisition: “Neara established the global benchmark for physics modelling and engineering-grade analysis. Acquiring Zepben will enable physical, electrical and risk modelling to come together holistically, addressing a critical US market gap and accelerating our ability to partner with leading players in the electrical modelling category.”

“In combination with other leading industry solutions, Neara will be unique in its ability to unlock insights for customers and collaborators that only surface when the three individual layers come together. This will create a new pathway to extend our established US market presence and advance customer engagement opportunities.”

Zepben CEO Adam White said: “Joining Neara accelerates what we’re working towards in Australia and around the world. Our technology tackles many of the challenges Neara’s customers already face, so it’s a natural fit.  Together, we’re bringing electrical and physical modelling into one digital twin grounded in physics. It’s exciting to see two Australian companies come together like this, giving our team more resources and support to solve bigger customer problems.  We’re looking forward to the challenge.”