Back in 2003, Ryan Kennedy was in an engineering class at UNC Charlotte when he thought of the idea for a digitized circuit breaker. Seventeen years later, he is CEO of Atom Power, an expanding company that produces those solid state circuit breakers and the software that runs them for construction companies and industrial manufacturers looking to improve worksite safety. This month, Atom Power received nearly $18 million in Series B funding from Rockwell Automation and ABB Technology Ventures to expand their technology into the electric vehicle charging space. Kennedy talked with Chuck McShane, Alliance SVP of Economic Research, about how software is changing electrical distribution, why Charlotte beats the Bay Area for energy entrepreneurship and engineering, and how electric vehicles could reshape our region and world.