Wisconsin's energy story this year is mostly about building. New data centers, new demand, and a lot of talk about new transmission lines to carry the power.
The company that won Launch Wisconsin is pitching the opposite. Get more out of the lines we already have.
On October 6, Skylark Energy Solutions of Madison took the $50,000 grand prize at Launch Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Technology Council's statewide startup contest, at Marquette University's Alumni Memorial Union in Milwaukee. It also won the deep tech category. Founder David Skrovanek's pitch is about squeezing more capacity out of the existing power grid instead of waiting on new lines to get built.
Who won Launch Wisconsin 2026?
The finalists pitched for five minutes each in front of five judges: Mike Thorson, Katie Schmitz of Ziegler Link-age Funds, Abby Kursel of gener8tor, Shayna Hetzel of the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, and David Arnstein of Clarevia.
One winner came out of each of the four categories, and Skylark took the grand prize.
The contest used to be the Wisconsin Governor's Business Plan Contest. This was its first year under the Launch Wisconsin name, its first year with these four categories, and its first year in Milwaukee in October instead of Madison in June. Around $3.1 million in cash and in-kind prizes have gone out since WEDC started sponsoring it in 2004.
What does Skylark Energy Solutions do?
Skrovanek explained it to Spectrum News 1 last fall with a traffic analogy:
"You can think of power lines as being kind of similar to highways, and that highways have a maximum speed limit."
That speed limit is usually set conservatively, as if conditions were always close to the worst case. But a power line's real limit is mostly about heat. On a cold, windy day, the same line can safely carry a lot more electricity than its fixed rating says it can.
Measuring that in real time is called dynamic line rating. Skylark's tool for it is FORM, short for Fiber Optics for Rating and Measurement. It's a fiber-optic sensor system that sits on transmission lines and reports the conditions that set how much power a line can actually handle, so a utility can raise the limit when it's safe to.
FORM comes out of Germany. In November 2025, Skylark partnered with Lancier Monitoring, the Münster company behind the system, to bring it to utilities and grid operators in North America. Existing installations have shown capacity increases of up to 50 percent.
Skrovanek earned his PhD at UW-Madison and is a former Fulbright Scholar. Last fall he was in talks with utilities in Wisconsin and around the country, with a U.S. pilot planned alongside the Electric Power Research Institute.
Why does a grid company win in 2026?
Because the bill is showing up in people's mailboxes.
In a Cap Times guest column co-written with UW-Madison PhD student Gabriel Shapiro, Skrovanek pointed out that average residential electricity rates in Wisconsin went from 13.8 cents per kilowatt-hour in 2020 to 19.2 cents. That's about a 40 percent jump in a few years.
Demand isn't slowing down either. Microsoft's AI data center in Racine County is one example of the new load coming onto the same grid. New transmission lines take years to permit and build, and someone pays for them.
Dynamic line rating doesn't replace new lines. But the column cites Minnesota's Great River Energy seeing an average capacity increase of 40 percent from its installations. If even part of that holds up here, it's capacity Wisconsin doesn't have to wait years for.
It's also the second time this summer a Madison energy company has been the headline. In July, Realta Fusion chose to build its fusion headquarters in Madison. Fusion is the long game. Skylark is about the grid we have this winter.
Did Madison sweep Launch Wisconsin?
Yes. All four category winners are from Madison.
That fits where the map was already heading. In July, 29 of the 52 semifinalists came from outside Madison and Milwaukee, and the semifinalist list looked like a statewide startup map. By September, seven of the 12 finalists were from Madison. Now it's four for four.
When the finalists came out, I said Madison was mostly dense, not necessarily better. I still think that, and I'm still not certain about it. Madison founders get more reps in front of judges, more programs to lean on, and more people a few blocks away who've done it before. CellTrack won the Greater Madison Chamber's Pressure Chamber competition before it ever got to Launch Wisconsin.
Skylark is a good example of density working, too. A UW-Madison PhD, a German technology partner, a Cap Times column, and conversations with utilities. That's a lot of reps before five minutes on a stage in Milwaukee.
The rest of the state can build that. It just takes more rooms.
What should you do next?
If you're building, start getting your reps
Northeast Wisconsin founders can apply to the New North Pitch Series, six local pitch competitions this November, through October 31. For everyone else, our list of startup accelerators and pitch competitions in Wisconsin is the place to find your next stage.
If you're thinking about the next check
A $50,000 prize is a start, not a round. Our guide to startup funding in Wisconsin covers the options that come after a prize check.
If you work at a utility or a big energy user
Reach out to Skylark. A winning pitch only matters if someone puts the sensor on a line.
Congratulations to David Skrovanek and Skylark, to BeachEase, Induction Technologies, and CellTrack, and to every founder who got up on that stage. Here's to more rooms, in more towns, before next October.
Sources: mkestartup.news, Spectrum News 1, energie.de, Cap Times, Launch Wisconsin semifinalist release
