Written by: Kristjan Eljand | Technology Scout
European Utility Week hosted more than 500 technology companies from 48 countries. Let’s recap the technology trends!
Geographical representation
The following map reflects the geographical distribution of the exhibitors. As expected, European companies were dominating with 122 participants from France and 100 from Germany. North-America was also well represented with ca 65 companies from the USA and 36 participants from Canada.
More interestingly, China and India had a very strong presence with ca 150 companies from those two countries.
That said, there were almost no exhibitors from South-America, Africa, and Australia. To summarize, we can draw an imaginary line on the equator and see that almost all of the participants came from the countries above the line.
The exhibitors from China and India are actually much less represented than numbers suggest. Companies from developed economies like the EU and the USA are very strong at marketing. While visiting them you’ll most probably find yourself in the modern, spacious and well-designed stand (see the image below). Most Asian companies are far behind when it comes to these qualities but… they will probably catch-up sooner than we expect. The only question remains — are Western companies able to compete once that happens!?
Trending product categories
If we look at the product categories by which exhibitors have labeled themselves, we see:
- Very strong competition among the providers of edge tech including IoT, sensors and smart meters. Technologies presented included both hardware and software and one has to have good expertise to pinpoint the best suitable provider.
- General data analytics software incl. cloud platforms, visualization, and descriptive analytics software are well covered. That said, there is a lot of room for application-specific analytics solutions.
- Behind the meter tech and smart home, solutions have a solid presence but there is a lot of room to go.
- Demand response and EV tech are only beginning to emerge. The state-of-art with all of these is “first-tests-carried-out-in-relevant-environment”. In other words, the field is far from being mature and the companies are just carrying out the first real-world field tests.
When we look at the other side of the spectrum (labels with only a few mentions), we see:
- Hydrogen tech is clearly a topic of interest as one of the most important alternatives for fully battery-electric mobility.
- There were only a few players who provided simulation and AR/VR (Augmented Reality / Virtual Reality). The technology itself is mature enough to be used in production environments but it’s just not amongst the top priorities when it comes to digitalization.
- Alternative storage options (pumped hydro, CAES, Flywheel) have very few players and thus it might have good potential for future start-ups.
For inspiration
I would also like to share three technologies that inspired me the most. Firstly, while it’s easy to understand that electric vehicles will change the mobility as we know it, it’s difficult to see all of the business opportunities that this paradigm shift creates. For example, the Swedish company Unimi has started to provide modular foundation elements and adaptors for EV chargers. This is a completely new product that has emerged with the widespread installation of EV chargers. What will be the other novel opportunities!?
Secondly, there were at least two companies offering a technology called fiber optic sensors. The main idea is to send the laser beam to fiber optic cable, detect changes in the beam when it reaches back to the source and then map real-world events like strain, pressure, vibration and temperature changes to these changes. Thus, the whole fiber-optic network could be one big sensor, that enables to detect events happening hundreds of kilometers away from the source. The video below from Prisma Photonics explains the general idea:
Finally, in our search for pure energy sources, we can’t forget nuclear fusion — the energy generation mechanism of our Sun and all the other stars. The image below is an illustration of ITER — the largest fusion device in the world, being currently built by 35 nations in Southern France. ITER is expected to be the first nuclear fusion reactor that produces net energy (that is: produces more energy than it uses). Sadly, it isn’t expected to be ready for energy generation before 2035.
In general, there are few dozens of active players in the field of nuclear fusion that can be divided into two groups based on their approach: A. take something that is working and make it cheap or B. take something cheap and make it work. Most of the companies are from North-America with Renaissance Fusion being the first European start-up. They all share a common goal: to make a star on earth (literally)!
