Hi, and welcome to Tech Briefs, the latest edition of Cardinal News’ weekly digital and life sciences roundup, going live on Wednesdays.
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Dublin-based Narro to launch
A pair of Radford University graduates will hard-launch their electric truck company next week, handing over a key to Pulaski County officials.
Dublin-based Narro Trucks’ launch event is set for Aug. 20, with invited guests that include potential customers and government officials, including U.S. Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Salem. They’ll meet with the company owners, Cullen Danilowicz and Maxell Collignon, and a workforce team with an average age of 27, according to a company spokeswoman.
Narro builds what a news release describes as an affordable utility vehicle for local governments, college campuses, parks, commercial and agricultural uses. The trucks are 100% electric.
The company has already sold one of the vehicles to Radford University, where Cullen Danilowicz’s father, Bret Danilowicz, is president.
The Roanoke Blacksburg Technology Council announced at its TechNite 2026 in May that Narro would share its Entrepreneur of the Year award with Webster Santos, a Virginia Tech chemistry professor and biotech entrepreneur.
Narro’s mission is to reduce carbon emissions without sacrificing strength, reliability or capability, according to the RBTC. The truck’s “micro-mobility applications” feature a “higher payload compared to competition,” said TechNite presenter Libby Crockett, Pulaski County’s director of small business solutions.
Collignon, the company’s CEO, and Danilowicz, its chief tech officer, raised enough capital last year to industrialize their idea, Crockett said.
SCC: Data centers to pay for new energy transmission
Data centers in Virginia will be responsible for covering the costs of energy transmission infrastructure built for their facilities, according to a State Corporation Commission order filed July 31.
Multiple news sources, including the Virginia Mercury, reported the order, which goes into effect on Sept. 1 and requires Dominion Energy to devise policy that will charge data centers and other so-called large-load energy users for the cost of line extensions, transmission substations and other infrastructure needed to power them.
[Disclosure: Dominion is one of our donors, but donors have no say in news decisions; see our policy.]
The goal is to find an “acceptable and symmetrical approach” to assigning costs, the order reads.
The SCC was responding to Dominion’s annual request for a rate adjustment clause, in which the utility sought to recover infrastructure costs of $1.5 billion. Dominion argued that large-load users should pay more. Until now, Dominion was authorized to fund those projects and then recover the costs from ratepayers. The company estimated that it would have cost “a typical residential customer” using 1,000 kilowatt-hours per month an additional $2.90 per bill, according to the SCC order.
Gov. Abigail Spanberger, through her chief energy officer, Joseph Almond, submitted a filing to the SCC on July 9 urging the commission to require data centers pay for the energy transmission projects. A Democratic group of General Assembly members followed suit on July 16, with a letter to the SCC supporting Spanberger’s position.
Dels. Sam Rasoul, D-Roanoke, and Lily Franklin, D-Montgomery County, were among those who co-signed the letter written by Sen. Schuyler VanValkenburg, D-Henrico County, and Sen. Angelia Williams-Graves, D-Norfolk.
AI Decoded to feature Claude Code breakdown
RBTC’s periodical artificial intelligence seminar resumes on Thursday, with Thrive.exe founder and creative director JP Azevedo discussing the AI tool that he uses to run his shop.
Claude Code, an Anthropic product, is the subject, starting at 6 p.m. at the QCowork Coworking Space, 105 Roanoke Street East, Blacksburg. Azevedo uses it to run his Blacksburg-based marketing studio, which custom builds brands and websites.
Register online for the event, open to RBTC members and non-members, and all experience levels.
