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Making wind and solar renewables attractive for investors by boosting operational predictability and ROI

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - TruePower (Making wind and solar renewables attractive for investors by boosting operational predictability and ROI)

Reporting period: 2019-08-01 to 2019-11-30

Problem:

Electricity generation is the single largest emitter of carbon to the atmosphere. Efforts to address climate change require full transition to renewable energies which will only be possible with profitable business models. However renewable energy is still a young industry and has huge optimisation potential - we need to optimise market mechanisms that enable successful business models critical to the long-term success of the industry. With wind and solar plant revenues being highly dependent on operational performance of the plant and industry moving away from fixed tariffs to market-driven pricing, plant owners and operators are being put under pressure to generate revenue through various bidding strategies. At the same time, plants face various operational inefficiencies leading to lost revenue of up to 10-15%. With energy production below target level and unsecure revenue streams, pressures on the wind and solar plant operators are increasing. In such conditions, renewable energies are lot less attractive for investors due to the increased risk profile.

Importance to society:

The EU aims to increase the share of renewable energy in its total energy consumption to at least 32.5% by 2030. Wind power has grown exponentially in recent years and is expected to cover up to 23% of EU electricity demand by 2030. To achieve European and global targets for the reduction of greenhouse emissions, it is fundamental for wind and solar power to remain profitable without subsidised long-term contracts.
TruePower combines continuous stream of raw asset data at an aggregated wind or solar park level with the meteorological and market data and offers actionable insights on revenue generation strategies, enabled by our proprietary machine-learning algorithms. Such revenue optimisation mechanisms are a necessary attribute of successful growth of the renewables market. In the long run, that means renewable energy can be predictable, profitable and therefore ubiquitous, helping to minimise the impact of CO2 on our planet.

Overall objectives:

Carry out a detailed market assessment & develop the go-to-market strategy. Assess product/market fit as well as market and financial feasibility of the solution.
Industrialise TruePower, tailoring it to the specific needs of the highest potential segments, carry out dedicated industry trials, prepare the production, sales & marketing organisation for growth.
Commercialise our solution across additional market segments.
We have carried out a detailed market assessment & developed the go-to-market strategy. We have assessed product/market fit as well as market and financial feasibility of the solution as well as individual features to inform the next iteration of our solution. We validated and refined our customer segmentation and defined the detailed go-to-market approach for our target customer segments.
Following the completion of the Phase 1 Market Assessment and Go-to-Market Strategy, we have developed the following next steps: We will industrialise the TruePower Platform to ease onboarding of major global wind and solar manufacturers and provide a defined standard scope of analyses and reports based on the product / market fit analysis. We will further develop Al based algorithms using high frequency plant parameters to derive recommendations to improve production as well as Al based fault detection algorithms for early detection of anomalies during operation and predictive maintenance purposes. Additionally, we will expand integration of external data feeds, with the intention to find partners for industry trials to ensure successful implementation.

At the sales level, we will prepare the global roll-out of our solution and identify the necessary measures for the desired growth and structuring of the sales organisation as well as prioritisation of countries.

In summary, this study enabled WinJi to be well-aligned to continue the growth and industrialisation of the TPP solution and to clearly define the next steps.
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