By It’s already October, which means that this year’s edition of Free Electrons is approaching its final event. 2022 has brought both new energy and new challenges to the global energy industry, and this year the world’s most promising startups partner with some of the largest utilities to design the future of energy.
EDP is present on multiple continents, and it is their pleasure to introduce us all to the ever-changing, dynamic and diverse region that is Latin America. As hosts of the Grand Finale, they’ll be welcoming everyone to their regional headquarters in the multicultural megacity that is São Paulo, Brazil.
To add to this, they’ve already expressed how this year’s journey has led to some valuable insights and a truly hybrid setup in the new post-pandemic environment:
Happening in a year of transition, the 2022 edition was definitely a challenge. However, we were still able to identify some of the most disruptive solutions and begin to identify pilots from technologies such as renewables, storage, grid improvement, among many others.
The Free Electrons Grand Finale is the celebration of all the work developed over the year, to which more than 500 startups have applied. Now, we have a cohort of 15 finalists that will share the progress on their pilot development and other learnings to improve their products. They will have the chance to network with their peers and learn more about each utility, while we foresee that a significant number of them will leave with deals in hand.
It is also an opportunity for the hosts, in this case EDP, to share more about their business strategy with partners and startups and some of the strategic pillars that we are following in the upcoming years.
For EDP this represents an opportunity to develop its Innovation Ecosystem worldwide with multiple partners, peers and startups: with more than 3000 startups in our ecosystem and more than 50M€ invested in the last years, being part of Free Electrons clearly creates the perfect environment to fill and energize a pipeline of innovative solutions that the world’s energy markets need so desperately now.
According to Luís Manuel, Executive Board Member of EDP Innovation, “The EDP group’s vision is to lead the energy transition, and this can only be done in a collaborative and systemic way, seeking to integrate multiple stakeholders. In this way, entrepreneurship proves to be an essential pillar of this transition: through entrepreneurs and start-ups it is possible to execute the energy transition more and faster.
Entrepreneurs have the ability to deploy the technologies that leverage this change, and they also have the ability to build more resilient and agile business models that can be tested in the market. EDP naturally seeks to integrate entrepreneurship through its multiple initiatives and support the development of these projects, believing that these technologies and solutions will make an effective contribution to present and future societies and consumers.”
We couldn’t agree more with our host for this Grand Finale and we look forward to the range of insights, learnings, and solutions that another year of Free Electrons can bring to innovations in energy. Those will be the ones to help power the world through this great transition of the early 21st century.
Comments