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: Hive Power (Switzerland)
Hive Power develops a turnkey solution for the creation and management of local energy communities on the blockchain, providing an economic optimisation for their participants by lowering their bills and valorising their assets.
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?
To get in contact with possible partners, such as big utilities and car manufacturers (or EV fleet managers) and hardware manufacturers. Companis as Google, Amazon or other horizontal supplier of home devices are also very interesting for us.
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?
Lessons lernt: The crowdfunding response in new technical solutions is 80% emotional and 20% rational. The key players in the future of energy will be EV and aggregators of flexibility.
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?
Most energy companies in Switzerland have no skin in the game, so they are not forced to innovate. Liberalization will change it dramatically.
Thanks for reading and thanks again Hive Power. More information about them can be found here: https://www.hivepower.tech/
More about the SET100, including a full list of each SET100 start-up can be found here.
