The largest energy innovation program
Free Electrons
The largest energy innovation program
Free Electrons
Free Electrons is the world’s largest open innovation program designed to bring disruptive energy solutions to market.
This isn’t just another open innovation program, it’s a multi-partner powerhouse. Every year, the Free Electrons partners, leading energy utilities, invite the world’s brightest startups to join their mission solving the sector’s biggest challenges.
By uniting forces within the same industry, utilities and startups share breakthroughs, scale game-changing solutions, accelerate technology adoption and shorten time-to-market of new products to achieve tangible progress in the energy transition.
Successful use cases become blueprints for global change and together, they’re building tomorrow’s energy ecosystem. Since 2018, Beta-i has supported Free Electrons as its innovation partner, working closely with the utilities to operationalize and evolve the program.
Next Generation
Renewables
Energy
Management/ Data
Asset
Optimisation
Thermal
Solutions
Grid Planning,
Optimisation and Stability
Energy
Storage
Connected & Engaged
Customers (B2B and B2C)
Mobility & Transport
Electrification
Key Results
Pilot Projects
Dollars In Deployments
Dollars In Direct Investment
Program Partners Over Time
Free Electrons
The Impact
Revolutionizing Green Energy Reporting
By linking data from ESB’s Carnsore wind farm with test customers’ hourly consumption, Granular Energy helped boosting accuracy in documenting green energy usage. It also tackles key challenges in Ireland’s energy sector, such as the demand for clean electricity and carbon emission management.
Enhancing Forecast Accuracy for Dams Optimization
Hydro-Québec teamed up with Salient Predictions to improve seasonal weather forecasting through a tool combining traditional models with AI. This hybrid tool helps predict water inflows to large dams and optimize energy transactions.
Optimizing With Dynamic Load Management
E.ON partnered with gridX to optimize EV charging through a dynamic load management solution using gridX’s platform. The AI-based system distributed charging power efficiently, increasing E.ON’s EV capacity without grid extensions. E.ON acquired a majority stake in gridX, and later on, the remaining shares, reinforcing its commitment to transforming the energy sector.
Guiding Investments for Higher Impact
Origin collaborated with the Australian startup Gridcog to enhance its Data & Analytics capabilities. Gridcog’s platform optimizes energy projects, guiding investments for better environmental and commercial returns. The solution has improved Origin’s data collection and provides a user-friendly interface for its C&I customers, supporting various teams across the utility.
Transforming Costumer Data into Energy Insights
EDP partnered with NET2GRID to test an Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring technology, analyzing household energy consumption from smart meters. NET2GRID’s solution delivered detailed consumption breakdowns using standard 15-minute data. EDP expanded the use of this technology beyond Europe, supporting the shift from low-margin commodity sales to high-margin, data-driven services, promoting a more efficient and sustainable energy future.
Rewarding Consumers for Energy Efficiency
Origin Energy worked with U.S. startup OhmConnect to bring demand response technology to Australia, rewarding users for reducing energy consumption during peak times. Through game-like incentives, the goal is to engage users, improving energy efficiency and grid stability. This collaboration led to the launch of Origin Spike in 2020, a rewards program encouraging customers to cut energy use during peak periods.
L&D Leading to a Custom Solution
The goal of the collaboration between Origin and Tempus was to help reduce energy costs and support decarbonization. Origin tested this technology at select sites to explore savings from load shifting. They developed a custom platform to manage distributed assets, enhancing decarbonization, grid stabilization, and personalized solutions for customers. As a result, Origin’s Virtual Power Plant now operates at 1.4 GW with over 400,000 connected services.
Revolutionizing EV Charging
E.ON Next teamed up with ev.energy to improve its EV customer offerings and create a competitive time-of-use tariff. They developed the Next Drive tariff, featuring one of the UK’s lowest off-peak rates at 4p per kWh between midnight and 4 am. Ev.energy supplied the technology, including a mobile app and APIs, to automate and optimize EV charging during these hours without needing extra hardware. E.ON Next Drive became a popular choice for UK EV drivers, providing substantial savings and a user-friendly app experience.
Optimizing Grid Reliability with AI Predictions
CLP Hong Kong partnered with Jungle.ai on a pilot project to improve power grid efficiency and reliability. Using machine learning algorithms, the initiative aimed to predict equipment failures and optimize maintenance schedules. This collaboration is part of CLP’s strategy to integrate advanced technology for sustainability, showcasing the transformative impact of AI on modern power systems.
Decarbonizing industrial heat production
The partnership between EDP and Rondo will allow industries and other energy-intensive clients in Europe to use renewable energy to generate heat. It will also allow to open a new market: the supply of clean industrial heat, at a large-scale and with an affordable cost, powered by wind and sun. EDP aims to develop up to 400 MW of wind and solar projects in the medium-term to power up to 2 GWh of Heat Battery installations from Rondo.
Sub Heading
Sub Heading
Sub Heading
Want to know more about
similar services?
Visit our Services page
It’s time to grow your business
with collaborative innovation.
I want to talk to the Beta-i team