EDP and European Commission promote deals between startups and global companies | edp.com

EDP has partnered with the European Commission's Innovation Council to hold a matchmaking day between energy sector startups and major global companies. This is a unique way to present new businesses and solutions and to create partnerships with multinational companies which, like EDP, invest in open innovation. 

This Energy Startups Matchmaking Day will take place at the company's headquarters in Lisbon, and its partners include Microsoft, Cisco, Siemens, ESB, ENECO, Innogy, and CEZ. Throughout the day, 29 startups will make their pitch to global energy/tech companies and also have the opportunity to hold bilateral meetings to present their solutions and businesses in more detail. These startups come from 14 countries and work in the energy sector or offer digital tools that can be used in various areas and businesses in which EDP operates, such as solutions for smart distribution grids, storage, cybersecurity, data analysis, and others.

The purpose of this Matchmaking Day is to allow these multinationals - which are always looking for innovative solutions to improve their businesses and services - to find useful new tools created by these startups, which have already undergone a rigorous evaluation process by the European Innovation Council and have a history of tested and implemented solutions. For startups, it's an opportunity to introduce themselves - on a single day - to several major global companies with millions of customers. 

The 29 startups are funded by the SME Instrument - the European Innovation Council's investment vehicle for pan-European innovation and technological development under the European Commission's Horizon 2020 Program. More than 100 startups signed up for the event, but only the companies with the highest-potential solutions for EDP's business models and partners have been selected. 

These are the startups chosen for the event:

• AIR (Italy): Air is an Italian Insurtech startup focused on automotive sector and services
  on demand. AIR’s cloud-based car data analysis platform gathers advanced diagnostics and telemetry data to increase the safety of the driver, adding more convenience to the car’s owners while being a big cost-saver through AIR’s predictive maintenance IoT solution.


• Alerion (Spain): Alerion’s intelligent and efficient inspector drones provide for high-quality
  real-time infrastructure inspections, drastically reducing maintenance costs. The company has developed a patented laser based high-precision relative navigation technology, that allows to get up close to the desired structure, always ensuring high-quality data and analyzing it in real-time


• Aliter Group (Spain): STORM is an advanced controller and manager for utility scale PV power plants
  with storage. STORM is addressed to markets with a high penetration of PV, such as islands systems and to scenarios with 100% renewable energy generation, such the EU framework for 2050. STORM gives full ancillary services to the grid such frequency, voltage regulation, power fluctuations mitigation due to
  irradiation fluctuation and demand peak response, including night demand peak.


• Alphageomega (France): Alphageomega is a French SME whose aim is to provide services and solutions
  for Geosciences complex problems. We design and develop new innovative efficient tools/devices to monitor precisely T&D infrastructures and associated Environmental parameters. We attempt to optimize T&D maintenance, natural risks mitigation and improve people‘s safety.


• Cascoda (United Kingdom): In 2015 the UK Office of Communications (Ofcom) concluded that 2.4GHz IoT technology could only cover 36% of UK houses. The reason for this is that IoT devices in the EU are limited to 10mW transmit power, as opposed to 100mW in the US. As a consequence they have short range. Cascoda solves this by increasing the receive sensitivity threefold.


• Correlata (Israel): Correlata developed a revolutionary set of tools that leverage big data, analytics,
  and machine learning to help companies with their most pressing digital transformation challenges. Correlata provides leading IT business collaborative solution that puts IT operations in the spotlight, allowing companies to gain valuable insights that fuel the strongest IT investment across any organization,
  delivering operation efficiency and cost reduction from day one.


• Datapole (França): DATAPOLE is an editor of software Solutions dedicated to the optimization of
  human and material resources. The Solutions developed by DATAPOLE rely
  on powerful algorithms of artificial intelligence and big data technologies
  dedicated to operational performance. These Solutions help better understand
  and anticipate the fluctuations of an activity in order to better size and allocate
  the resources close to the real needs of the company.


• Dexma (Spain): DEXMA is an energy data-driven software company specialized in big data, AI,
  and energy management to optimize building‘s energy consumption by means
  of a strategy to detect, analyze and control.


• Elecgy (Spain): Elecgy is a technology-based company aiming to transform electric power
  management at the demand side by providing smart and connected electronic
  systems that minimize losses and maximize energy efficiency.


• EMS-Powerstar (United Kingdom): Powerstar aims to ensure, emphasised by its intellectual property, a differentiated product offering through the quality of its bespoke products that utilise leadingedge
  technologies to deliver market leading smart energy solutions.


• Emtech (Greece): Integration of Distributed Energy Resources in the distribution grid.


• Enging (Portugal):Enging is specialised in innovative industrial asset condition monitoring
  solutions for electrical motor and power transformers, focusing on the latest IIoT technologies. All the technologies developed are non-invasive and detect the main faults in these assets through a new predictive maintenance technique only based on electrical variables.


• GreenFlux (Netherlands): We developed a cloud-based smart charging platform and a range of smart
  charging controllers. The cloud-based platform powers Charge Point Operators over the world by facilitating asset management, international roaming, billing and transactions. The smart charging controller fits in every charge station and changes it into a smart energy station.


• Hakom (Austria): Time Series are the elementary particles of the energy industry. Our company‘s
  purpose is to make big data useful.


• Infinite Fingers (Germany): Infinite Fingers’ Universal Monitoring and Control (UMC) allows Off-Grid Power System operators and integrators to remotely maintain their sites at lower cost versus on-site maintenance and communicate with any component from any manufacturer to easily create and deploy systems specialized for their environment and need.


• Insplorion (Sweden): Insplorion’s nano sensors revolutionize battery control and air quality
  measurements, and opens new fields of research with measurement instruments within catalysis, material- and life science through the platform NanoPlasmonic sensing (NPS).


• Isotrol (Spain): Isotrol is a Spanish SME with leading utility-scale software for supervision
  and control systems for renewable energies. The company has a strong focus on digitalization and to enhance its customer profitability. Its monitoring and control systems, Bluence, manages 31 GW in 1,785 utility-scale renewable energy plants around the world.


• Lancey (France): Lancey democratises "behind-the-meter“ storage for solar self consumption
  with the first smart electric space heater to embark a battery.


• Laterizi Gambettola - Soltigua (Italy):Soltigua is the only company worldwide to offer 3 different solar tracking technologies for PV trackers, parabolic troughs and linear Fresnel collectors. No other company offers more than 1. Building on its 100-year engineering tradition, Soltigua developed patented know-how thanks to R&D for >15M€ and commercial projects across 4 continents.


• LithiumBalance (Denmark): Lithium Balance specialise in safe and performance-improving management of Li-ion batteries. We provide Battery Energy Storage Systems for residential and commercial buildings, PV plants and grid support, that are cost competitive as well as more energy efficient to operate and therefore provides higher return on investment for the owner.


• Livedrive (Portugal): Vehicle Connectivity & Big Data - keys to higher levels of Road Mobility
  Sustainability, through a Cultural Change of How You Drive. Own and drive a car is cultural - the interest of the Individual prevails over the Collective. i2D motivates the Individual to improve the car usage, promoting a cultural change and consequent Social benefit.


• Northern Tech (Norway): Northern.tech is the commercial entity behind the open source project Mender,
  which has adopted the open core model for its delivery and monetization strategy providing a freely available open source product to securely update connected devices, while having commercial features to be built on top of its open source core product.


• SIARQ (Spain): In SIARQ we work for Zero Emission Cities by integrating Solar Energy in urban
  landscape. Recently we delivered the SOLAR URBAN HUB, a new generation of esthetic-driven solar lighting products that work as IoT platform for Environmental Sensors and other Smart Devices.


• SoundEnergy (Netherlands): SoundEnergy is a scale up active in the cooling industry. We provide sustainable cooling with solar heat or industrial waste heat. By converting heat directly into
  usable cooling without CO2 footprint, no power consumption, no refrigerants needed, no maintenance and no moving parts or wear.


• UbikSolutions (Estonia): UBIK Solutions is an Estonian firm dedicated to smart solutions for sustainable
  energy industry. We are developing a plug&play, shade-tolerant microinverter that allows 30% higher energy harvest in partial shaded conditions thanks to our patented OptiVerter(R) Technology. It‘s also simpler, cheaper and more efficient than competing solutions.


• Vortex (Spain): Spanish tech startup that is developing a multi-patented new kind of wind
  turbine without blades nor gears or shafts. The Vortex‘s wind turbine is not actually a turbine since it does not rotate. It is based on the phenomenon of aeroelastic resonance, harnessing energy from the wind on the emission of Von Karman‘s vortexes. This process is called Vortex Shedding or Vortex Street
  Effect, and it is usually a problem for architecture and aeronautics.


• Wind Inertia (Spain): Win Inertia is a technological solution provider, pioneer in creating hybrid
  energy storage solutions (HESS), optimized in economic terms thanks to the integration of several energy storage technologies, enhanced power electronics and patented energy management algorithms in an exclusive, flexible hardware and software platform.


• Zapgo (United Kingdom): Zap&Go’s Carbon-Ion (C-Ion®) energy storage technology exploits the established science of the supercapacitor, but takes it to a new level. Supercapacitors have
  high power and charge quickly, but have low energy and discharge quickly. C-Ion charges very fast (in 5 minutes or less) but discharges slowly, offering a unique combination of power density and energy density


• Zaphiro (Switzerland): Zaphiro Technologies has developed SynchroGuard, an innovative monitoring
  and automation solution for the smart management of electrical distribution
  grids, which allows utilities to safely integrate renewable energies as well as
  to improve grid reliability by quickly reacting to electrical faults.