About

Home

Contact

Environment

An Interview with Apio

December 23, 2022

Apio is a Venture Builder composed of IT engineers, software developers and energy experts with a multi-year experience in Blockchain and Internet of Things project development with leading European Energy companies. This wealth of experience has allowed the team to develop an Energy and Asset management platform that aligns perfectly with the needs of Energy and Asset Manager Companies. Some key features include Real Time Data Acquisition, Edge Device Integration, Data Timestamping, Data Integrity, Data Analytics and Insights Report. Apio’s vision is to become one of the top European innovators in providing technology for a transparent energy transition.

What inspired your company to enter PLATOON's second Open Call, and how has its involvement with PLATOON benefitted your company?

 

The EU aims to be climate-neutral by 2050. Decarbonisation is essential in the global drive towards net zero. To achieve this goal, regulators, governments, companies and citizens must work together in an energy transition strategy that gradually shifts from using fossil fuels to renewable energy sources. More than 40% of the European energy demand is the consumption of houses and buildings. For this, the production of distributed energy can boost citizens' energy independence and, at the same time, contribute positively to reducing the costs of transporting energy on the grid. Innovative Technologies - such as 5G connectivity, IoT systems, AI and Blockchain - can be used to generate a real-time digital twin able to monitor and manage renewable resources and ensure a more efficient, reliable and sustainable grid infrastructure. We are in the middle of an energy transition where also the morphology of the grids changes dramatically. From a centralised grid (with Central Energy Plant) to a fully distributed and decentralised model, where prosumers can interact and share energy.

 

This step gives the end-user an active role in the grid (prosumers). In this context, users need to equip themselves with platforms that, as a Digital Twin, is able to manage and optimise micro-grids, as well as create value from energy transactions. Apio's vision is to become one of the top European innovators in providing technology for a transparent energy transition. At Apio, we have been working since 2016 on the development and implementation of systems for the management and optimisation of energy flows within the energy grid. In 2020, we registered a patent shared with ACEA (Italian multi-utility) and INDRA (international system integrator) on an electrical measurement device that can authenticate (timestamping and identity) on any blockchain network.

 

By participating in the project, Apio could integrate the PLATOON Framework by increasing the capacity of its assets management platform to improve the Digital Twin functionalities with real-time data flow and improve the data-acquisition algorithm in a large-scale pilot project. The work done by Apio in PLATOON improves the interoperability layer in Venera Framework to increase the capabilities for future use cases such as micro-grid and Energy Communities.

 

PLATOON is funding the development of your VENERA project. Can you tell us more about VENERA?

 

The Energy Companies (Utilities, Retailers, DSO, and Producers) need tools to manage their renewable assets. However, energy management systems are fragmented and difficult to use as the number of plants increases. The energy companies need a single system able to send insights about the performances, receive real-time feedback about issues, and display historical and real-time trends in a nutshell, and they need a platform to manage the digital twin of the plants. Starting from this opportunity, Apio developed Venera in 2018. Venera is an Energy and Asset management tool that can be used by utilities, Renewable Energy Asset Managers, Energy Saving Companies, Plant managers and Energy Managers to improve observability and efficiently manage renewable energy plants through a Digital Twin enabled by IoT and AI technology. The biggest selling point of the platform is the interoperability with ancillaries grid services like energy flexibility and demand response services it provides. Apio, the company behind Venera, specialised in providing technologies for Digital Twin in the energy market; In the last few years, we partnered with companies like Areti, A2A, and Enel and research entities like ENEA on several micro and smart grid-focused projects. To become one of the top European innovators in providing technology for a transparent energy transition, we start the develop a new platform to manage the micro-grids in terms of energy and economic exchanges. The platform born from Venera will be able to provide the tool for sharing P2P energy starting from the application of the Renewable Energy Community model.

 

An Renewable Energy Community is an association that produces and shares renewable energy, generating and managing cost-effective green energy autonomously, reducing CO2 emissions and energy waste. The community may be composed of local citizens, businesses, public administrations, small and medium-sized enterprises, etc. For more info, see Directive 2018/2001/EU and the subsequent Directive 2019/944/EU.

 

What advice would you give to startups wanting to develop their solutions in the smart technology sector?

 

Smart Technology Sector needs huge technological skills that are lacking in large companies. Startups wanting to develop a solution in the smart technology sector need to test what they are doing and make it available to companies in the sector. For this reason, competitions such as Open Innovation or Open Calls such as PLATOON's are key moments that allow startups to test the solution and at the same time scale it up in a relevant environment. In this way it is possible to quickly increase the TRL of the solution and realise what is missing to grow further. During the process, the startup needs to constantly ask about the purpose behind the product and never lose sight of it. Knowing how to answer this question makes a huge difference, especially when you need to change everything to be successful.

 

What do you think the greatest challenges will be in bringing smarter technology to energy management?

 

How we produce, consume, and exchange energy today has changed and will change further in the coming years. Energy market operators cannot ignore this change. Shortly, every grid user will be able to produce his energy and exchange it with those close to him as if he were an operator. This new model in which the consumer becomes a producer (Prosumer) requires a great technological effort. The speed of diffusion of this P2P exchange model will strongly depend on the market's ability to provide simple tools that allow anyone to manage their home or business as if it were a plant with a real active role on the network. The challenge for technologies will once again be to make the application of balancing, efficiency and energy exchange logic transparent, clear and simple, which until recently were the prerogative of a few specialised operators. Technologies such as the IoT, AI and the Blockchain are the key to enabling the digital twin in the energy sector, and to providing an easy-to-use and fast-to-adopt solution that could be used worldwide also from the prosumers, supporting the EU to be climate-neutral by 2050.