New Year - New Challenges - New Opportunities

The news of Monarch Tractor’s restructuring and the end of its road (furrow?) as a manufacturer is disappointing for electrification in general and for Gridtractor in particular. 

As a practical matter, the two Gridtractor grants on which Monarch was a partner were placed on hold by the CEC pending review of plans to revise their scope. REACT (Rural Electrification And Charging Technology) incentives are not available until the conclusion of this process but we continue to offer charging technology and services to customers, on commercial terms or using other sources of incentives.

More broadly, where does this development leave Ag electrification and Gridtractor?

TL/DR - three different answers!

• Electric tractors: moving very slowly but there are pilot opportunities with other OEMs.

• Ag and rural electrification: taking off with a real need for Gridtractor’s solutions.

• Other capabilities: to provide all possible options for rural customers, we built the Multipurpose Tool for California’s Grid, and are offering its capabilities to all customer segments, partners, utilities and CCAs.

Electric Tractors

I’ll leave the Monarch post-mortem for others but the notion that they would be the ‘Telsa of Ag’ – the pure play EV OEM that spurs adoption and drags the legacy manufacturers into the arena–is not playing out as envisioned. Monarch does plan to license elements of its technology to other OEMs but how that plays out remains to be seen. Meanwhile, there are no significant pure play competitors in the electric tractor market. On the other hand, market leader Deere continues to tease electric options, including a 130 HP E-Power tractor, that may be available in 2026, and New Holland lists the T4 Electric Power for sale on its website. At best, these seem to be ‘toe in the water’ offerings for now.

Rural Electrification

From dozens of conversations and site visits from Yolo to Santa Barbara counties, I learned that electrification isn’t coming–it is already happening on farms and in all kinds of rural operations. From providing charging for visiting wine tasters  and guests, to pickups, employee vehicles, utility vehicles, delivery vans and excavators, farmers and rural operators see the benefits of electrification.

Equally gratifying is that the problems that Gridtractor was founded to solve–getting sufficient charging capacity out of limited services, sharing power with a variety of other electrical loads, the state of rural electrical infrastructure, the complexity of managing utilities, and managing charging in coordination with the grid–are alive, well and demand solutions. 

I am optimistic, therefore, and even excited about our plan to rejigger the REACT program around a broader set of rural opportunities for all types of electric vehicles and equipment types, and to deploy the charge management and grid integration technologies that we have developed. 

The Multipurpose Tool For California’s Grid

Saving the best for last!

To build a grid-integrated charge management system for all the rates, programs, rules and curveballs served up by California utilities and regulators, we built an array of capabilities that are valuable individually and across customer segments, and for utilities and CCAs.  

For example, to ensure that winery customers could enroll chargers in flexible pricing programs without impacting carefully-tuned energy management for their production facilities, we sought an approved submeter. When we found there was none, we partnered with two manufacturers to get their devices approved and applied to be a Meter Data Management Agent (MDMA). Now, we are the first MDMA in all three utilities and the first with production deployments - not for Ag, but for manufacturing and commercial real estate customers!

Similarly, our Automated* Load Management (A*LM) technology, that was built to enable user-prioritization of charging and irrigation pumps sharing an electrical service, is a great fit for many industrial applications.

The dynamic rates research, development and program implementation that are in Gridtractor's DNA continue to be offered to customers in all segments through the PG&E and SCE flexible pricing pilots and the building blocks-analytics, program design, implementation, software and Automation Service Provider (ASP) program access - are available a la carte to technology partners, energy service providers and CCAs.

Along with technology, the through-line of research, analysis, program design and regulatory advocacy, from before Gridtractor’s founding, that led to the flex pricing pilots in California, have continued and expanded, and we have the tools and capabilities to help CCAs, utilities, technology companies and large energy users in those areas. We offer these in the form of our flexible pricing platform and Professional Services.

The Bottom Line

Starting 2026 with the loss of a partner that was key to Gridtractor’s evolution from its founding is tough. Over time, I still believe that the opportunity for farmers to retake control of their energy and to power operations with locally-produced, cheap, efficient, clean electrons will overcome the obstacles standing in the way of change. But that will not happen quickly enough for Gridtractor to be mostly about tractors and, so, we will mostly be about the grid. Fortunately, we have a lot to offer and there are a lot of problems for which we have the solutions. 

Onward and upward (at 5 mph)!