Who is the winner of the startup challenge?

It’s out: The winner of Uniper's inaugural Startup Challenge is NovoGrid, a pioneer in Grid Edge Intelligence software with a suite of patented products which benefit electricity generators and utilities. For the Startup Challenge format, several startups were selected to find new grid solutions to enhance Uniper’s capability and service offering. 

The project was initiated by Uniper’s Innovation department: “The ideation boiler has to keep running the whole time, to get new impulses from internal and external sources, turn them into new ideas and enrich these into scalable and sustainable business models. As an innovation manager, I interconnect all pieces internally and externally. Startups are an ideal source for new business ideas”, says Tobias Georgi, coordinating lead of the Startup Challenge. For Uniper it is a new innovative way to cooperate with start-ups in an early stage.

The search field

With the restructuring of the energy production landscape to manage the growth of renewables, maintaining grid stability and security of supply is becoming a crucial challenge for electricity grid operators. “As a big energy company, we see opportunities to support the grid in the flexibility market. There is a lot of potential”, says Tobias Georgi. In order to facilitate this transformation process, Uniper was looking for startups to jointly develop innovative grid solutions. After scouting, and the conduction of remote pitches, two startups were selected for the 2,5 day Innovation Camp. “These 2,5 days have been exciting and intense. We met completely new people, virtually and had a limited time to build relationships, generate ideas and create a business model. 

It has been a really productive time during the Innovation Camp where we identified several strong use cases for different departments within Uniper, elaborated them further with experts and agreed a good, solid plan to go forward into the four-month proof-of-concept phase”, explains Ben Broughton, Electrical Engineer at Uniper and NovoGrid project lead. “From the very first engagement, it was clear that NovoGrid have technical capabilities which compliment those of Uniper. We know there are many opportunities to use grid visibility to enhance Uniper’s business and we are confident that NovoGrid are the right partner to collaborate with.”

The way of collaboration

In October 2021, the two finalists of the Startup Challenge presented their business ideas in the final pitch to a jury of senior managers within Uniper. The NovoGrid team convinced the Jury with an innovative idea to support project developers saving time securing a grid connection. Since then, a dedicated team of Uniper and NovoGrid is now testing and piloting the concept under real life conditions.  

This collaboration combines Uniper’s decarbonization strategy and renewable growth ambitions with NovoGrid’s grid-edge modelling skills to develop innovative grid solutions for renewable power generation. NovoGrid’s capability to model network conditions quickly provides unparalleled visibility of the grid. Grid visibility has the potential to unlock new opportunities throughout the project lifecycle from accelerating project development through to delivering new services for network operators. “Uniper does innovation right, the company dedicates cross-functional resources, facilitates introductions across its business units and gives access to key people. This has helped us accelerate the development of our solution enormously since winning the Startup Challenge”, says Paul Manning, CCO from NovoGrid in Dublin. “We would encourage other companies with new technologies in relevant areas for Uniper to apply in 2022.”

Stay tuned: a second startup challenge in 2022 is just around the corner!