As part of the SET Award 2019, the top 100-ranked start-ups who applied for the SET Award were rewarded the opportunity to participate and showcase as part of the Innovation Hub at the 24th World Energy Congress (WEC24) 2019 in Abu Dhabi. Sponsored by the Dubai Electricity and Water Authority, this incredible opportunity includes travel and accommodation expenses, and a showcase space for the SET100 at the congress.
In the lead up to WEC24, we asked the participating SET100 start-ups to answer a few questions to provide potential partners the opportunity to learn more about them and to also help other start-ups learn from their experiences. We thank them for their work toward the global energy transition and for sharing with us the following insights.
#SET100 Start-up: Rated Power (Spain)
We developed a game-changing technology that finds the smartest way to maximize the value of solar power plants. Our SaaS scans millions of iterations until finding the best configuration & generates hundreds of pages of engineering documents. We transform 4 weeks of work into 4 minutes.
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Traveling, pitching, partaking in meetings, and networking requires considerable time and effort. Other than perhaps being given a blank check, what is the best case scenario or result you as a start-up hope to get out of participating in initiatives such as the SET platform and the Innovation Hub at the 24th World Energy Congress in Abu Dhabi?
As a young energy company which operates worldwide, having the chance to gain visibility within an international event of these characteristics is a golden opportunity. Strengthening our global network, having the chance to cooperate with eastern energy players and, in the end, being referred by the leading companies in the market would be the optimum scenario for RatedPower.
Given the stage of your start-up and your particular focus/sector/technology, what is one challenge that you have overcome or lesson that you have learned that may be valuable to other similar start-ups?
When we first started none of us had had any experience in entrepreneurship; the path has been demanding: quitting our jobs and the security of our lives to start something completely new in the market. At the beginning, it is hard to convince large corporations to change the way they work, their operational processes and to trust a startup without any reference or guarantee. At the same time, it is extremely rewarding. These last two years have been as if we had lived more than 10 years of experience and we met exceptional people.
We have learned to not have fear of launching a project to the world, sharing our ideas, not only to our close environment but to our potential clients; asking them for advice, even with the risk of being plagiarized, because what makes the difference is the execution of the idea rather than the idea “per se”. We have also learned enormously from the feedback of our clients, which we have found to be an excellent source of knowledge.
What is one of the main obstacles or regulations that you have had to overcome prior to, or in preparation of market entry into your given business environment?
We are able to address pvDesign to all stakeholders within the solar photovoltaic industry throughout the world. Thus, our challenge focuses on dealing with players of different markets at the same time, of contrasting negotiating cultures and approaches. The line of action of the business development team has to be flexible and adjustable to any kind of environment.
Is there some recent news or something else you would like to share?
RatedPower has developed pvDesign, the leading software to optimize the design and engineering of utility-scale Solar Photovoltaic plants. With more than 40 customers, it has been used in more than 90 countries already.
Thanks for reading and thanks again to Rated Power. More information about them can be found here: https://ratedpower.com/
More about the SET100, including a full list of each SET100 start-up can be found here.
