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German Smart Grid specialist boosts U.S. energy transition: envelio expands into the USA and wins BloombergNEF Award
COLOGNE, Germany, April 24, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- With approximately five billion tons of CO2 per year, the U.S. currently accounts for 13 percent of global CO2 emissions. Reducing these emissions will require a massive expansion of renewable energy. A key challenge for the U.S. energy transition is the grid integration of renewable generation capacities. There are already more than 1,200 gigawatts (GW) of solar and wind capacity that has yet to be connected to the power grid. By comparison, in 2023 China installed about 290 GW of solar and wind capacity, or about a quarter of the U.S. unconnected renewable energy capacity. In other words, the U.S. has four times as much unused capacity as China added last year. The German clean tech company envelio aims to unlock this potential by enabling grid operators and utilities to automate and dramatically accelerate the grid interconnection process. As a result, the German market leader in smart grid software is now expanding into the U.S.  Intelligent Grids for a sustainable future worldwide: envelio expands to the U.S. The software specialist has been successfully offering its Intelligent Grid Platform (IGP) in Europe for some time. The IGP builds up and manages a digital twin of the power grid with a powerful network model management engine called Grid Hub. On this basis, the IGP provides a suite of integrated applications, several of which focus on accelerating the interconnection process. By automating grid data management and engineering analysis, the IGP enables a significant reduction of the processing time for grid interconnection requests and is able to handle the rapidly growing number of new requests over the next few years, without the need for long waiting times. In Germany alone, envelio has already been able to automate the process of more than 55,000 interconnection requests by using the IGP in the last 12 months, which corresponds to a saving of more than 50,000 hours of work fr engineers and technical planners. Next to interconnection solutions, the IGP also offers applications for data-driven decisions in other grid planning and grid operation processes. The European technology leader is now offering its award-winning software solution in the USA. Dr. Simon Koopmann, Co-Founder and CEO of envelio, states: "The U.S. grids are facing a huge wave of interconnection requests creating an urgent need for efficient grid analysis, effective grid expansion, and creative grid integration concepts. For this reason, we are now launching our Intelligent Grid Platform in the U.S. We look forward to bringing our vision of intelligent grids worldwide in this compelling market and are excited by the challenges ahead." One of the biggest challenges of the American energy transition is the digitization and, above all, the automation of the interconnection processes. By the end of 2023, there will be 1,086 GW of solar and 246 GW of wind (onshore) projects waiting to be connected to the grid. Dr. Koopmann adds: "These volumes illustrate the enormous untapped potential due to grid constraints. By automating the interconnection requests, we aim to unlock the potential for a rapid energy transition." envelio wins internationally acclaimed BloombergNEF Award Each year, BloombergNEF selects three innovative companies whose technologies help address three key challenges on the path to a net-zero economy. This year, envelio was honored in the category of 'Challenge 1: Relieving bottlenecks in the deployment of clean power.' Claire Curry, selection committee co-chair and global head of Technology, Industry & Innovation research at BloombergNEF, stated: "BNEF set up the Pioneers award 14 years ago to recognize, and by doing so to accelerate, the progress of climate-tech innovators. The work of these decarbonization innovators is more important than ever in this critical decade: the search for new climate solutions has never been as urgent. Our winners this year span, among other things, technology breakthroughs in clean fuels, methods of advancing building decarbonization, and new routes to accelerate the deployment of renewables." Dr. Koopmann concludes: "I am very proud of what the entire envelio team has achieved over the past few years. Winning the Bloomberg NEF Award not only demonstrates to us that we are on the right track, but also highlights the potential of our technology. It is also an excellent reference for our market entry in the USA." About the Intelligent Grid Platform (IGP): envelio's Intelligent Grid Platform (IGP) is a comprehensive software solution for the efficient planning and operational management of power distribution grids, providing a digital twin that processes, corrects and visualizes existing data. As smart metering increases the volume of data, the platform's accuracy improves, providing transparency into grid processes. The award-winning software adapts to different sizes of grid operators, making it a unique solution to the challenges of decentralized energy supply and distribution grid expansion. envelio's IGP enables grid operators to optimize and automate processes, laying the foundation for a rapid and decentralized global energy transition. About envelio: Founded in 2017 as a spin-off of RWTH Aachen University, envelio provides software for grid operators. With its specially developed Intelligent Grid Platform, the cleantech company offers its customers a transparent insight into actual grid operations. The digital twin enables grid operators to optimize processes through automation and digitization, address grid vulnerabilities, and to automate grid connections. The award-winning software company, based in Cologne, Germany, plans to offer its platform solution in additional markets and to continue its internationalization. Press Contact: Logo : https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/2395153/envelio_Logo.jpg
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