Five digital innovators impacting the energy transition

Here, we showcase five digital innovators with solutions impacting the energy transition that are participating in Enlit Europe later this year in Frankfurt.

As our energy systems transition away from fossil fuels and towards a more decarbonised, decentralised, digitalised and democratised model, as part of wider global efforts to tackle climate change, the necessity for innovative and nimble thinking grows, cementing the important of innovators and disruptors in the energy transition and in some cases perhaps “knights in shining armour” coming to the rescue.

Enlit Europe (and formerly as European Utility Week) has long recognised their importance and in particular the importance of having start-ups, scale-ups and other innovators at the heart of the often difficult conversations taking place as the industry transitions.

Back in 2014, Initiate was launched, a programme that seeks to champion energy innovation and provide opportunities for innovators and disruptors to connect and engage with industry incumbents.

For the upcoming event in Frankfurt, Enlit Europe and Initiate are delighted to once again be showcasing some of the most innovative start-ups and scale-ups that are seeking to accelerate the energy transition.

As highlighted above, digitalisation is profoundly impacting the energy industry, and whether is via AI, machine learning or big data, is one of the drivers of the transition, so in recognition of this, here are five exciting digital innovators which will be presenting their energy transition solutions in Frankfurt.

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Artial, Spain

A relative new comer to the market, Artial provides next level autonomy software for drone navigation. Its AI-driven Autonomy Engine is powered by dynamic obstacle avoidance and sense-and-avoid technology, making it ideal for safe flights in low-altitude environments.

Its solution is described as the world's first autonomous drone software that provides safe ‘beyond visual line-of-sight’ (BVLOS) operations, based on deep learning. The software is capable of intelligent decision making and self-awareness to fly without constant supervision and can be used for diverse applications, ranging from infrastructure inspections to urban air monitoring.

Bamboo Energy, Spain

Out of Barcelona, Bamboo Energy has developed a software platform offers a customised and flexible solution to independent energy aggregators and retailers to enable them to efficiently manage distributed flexibility resources. The platform can forecast market condition, consumption and flexibility using gathered data. At its core, it relies on advanced AI techniques, robust mathematical modelling, optimisation algorithms and cloud computing architecture.

According to Bamboo Energy, what sets them apart from competitor solutions is the fact that these characteristics are not present in any other current aggregator software solution in the market, making it the best-in-class software platform to manage and monetise energy flexibility for clients.

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Plexigrid, Sweden

This Swedish start-up is seeking to reinvent electricity grids for the energy transition by providing a first-of-a-kind ‘grid centric’ flexibility management system that enable DSOs to distribute 50% more energy within their existing network capacity. The solution developed by Plexigrid connects grid planners and operations with a host of flexibility pools across the grid, including down to low-voltage behind-the meter assets.

According to the start-up, its flexibility management system, not only cuts cost for both DSOs and consumers, it can also help to speed up grid connections and increase renewables hosting capacity.

Simerse, USA

Simerse is harnessing the power of AI to help utilities detect defects in their transmission and distribution networks in a truly unique way. What sets this VC-backed start-up apart from its competitors is its approach to teaching the AI. Unlike currently-available competing solutions, there is no requirement to collect any real-world imagery to train the AI. This can often be a challenge since grid defects are relatively rare and therefore not easy to get sufficient defect images for the AI training.

Simerse has elegantly manoeuvred around this problem by simply creating synthetic photorealistic images using CGI rendering technology. This imagery is then used to teach its AI models to find defects on the electric grid.

Urbio, Switzerland

Urbio is a SaaS solution for planning urban energy infrastructure that is built on generative design and AI. Users control the system to automatically generate thousands of plans according to hundreds of environmental and economic goals. Each plan contains all geo-referenced information required to achieve those goals, e.g. heat network layout, renovation measures, etc.

Free from manual trial-and-error, engineers can identify in minutes the best outcomes to meet their needs. Importantly, Urbio is scalable and applicable to a wide variety of energy problems: from neighbourhoods to cities, and from existing cities to new developments.

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To see and engage with more innovators and disruptors with equally innovative energy transition solutions, come and visit Initiate’s Start-up Community Hub at Enlit Europe, taking place between 29 November and 1 December in Frankfurt.