9 Oct 2024
Heimdall Power is an EIC Scaling Club Renewable Energies group member, offering a comprehensive solution to support real-time, data-driven decision-making for the operations and planning of high-voltage power lines.
Since its founding in 2016, the Norwegian scale-up has been on a mission to optimize the world's power grids to their fullest. To learn more about the grid challenge and how it can be managed with Heimdall Power's technologies, we spoke to the scale-up's CEO, Jørgen Festervoll.
Powering the future
As the CEO explains, the global energy transition presents a significant challenge for utilities. With the surge in electric vehicles, AI, and data centers, as well as the integration of renewable energy, grid capacity is at a premium. While expanding grid infrastructure is necessary, it's often constrained by time and resources. Therefore, optimizing existing grid infrastructure is crucial to meet the growing energy demand and ensure a sustainable future.
Most people don't know that 99% of the world's high-voltage grids don't have any sensors. And what may not seem like an issue is actually a major one. Jørgen explains:
“The limiting factor of a power line is the conductor temperature – it's like a speed limit. Not having sensors that measure the temperature is like driving without a speedometer. And when you're driving critical infrastructure like the power grid, you're naturally afraid to exceed the speed limit. Because of this limitation, utilities worldwide are forced to operate typically 20% to 40% below actual capacity limits.”
And that's precisely where Heimdall Power comes in. The scale-up equips power grids with sensors (the “speedometers”), enabling them to operate at a 30% higher capacity and accelerating the energy transition. Besides that, Heimdall Power's sensors offer a lot of other functionalities, such as icing detection, line faultiness, fire detection, and more: “We provide you with sensors of grid awareness to get more capacity, safety, and health out of your existing grid.”
Heimdall Power's sensor is the size of a bowling ball, weighs about eight pounds, and can self-charge on the line, allowing it to be operational for at least a decade. The company mounts sensors using drones, and the installation process takes as little as six seconds to complete.
“Just to put that into perspective – building a new high-voltage power line in Europe takes seven to twelve years. We can get a sensor up in six seconds. We recently installed the largest deployment of this technology in the US, and we did it in eight days. In this industry, nothing takes eight days. Not even booking a meeting with the CEO of a utility company takes eight days. So, our secret sauce is having a scalable sensor in production.”
Moreover, it's essential for the company that their product not only functions well but also looks aesthetically pleasing: “The fun thing is, [people] actually think our product was made by Apple because it looks that good,” says the CEO.
A culture of innovation and sustainability
Over the last few years, investors who initially focused on renewable energy sources like solar and wind power have realized the importance of grid upgrades to support these technologies. Hence, Heimdall Power's solution has been a hot topic in the energy industry. With a recently closed Series B of $25 million, the scale-up is running full-speed ahead toward its core goal – worldwide power grid optimization.
“It's very fun to be the CEO of a company that's so in the middle of everything. The grid is connecting everything, right? It's surprising that if you talked about the power grid at a private dinner party five years ago, people would question your social skills. Today, it's a cool topic because everybody is aware of this challenge we're facing.”
Regarding the scale-up team, Jørgen tells us that a healthy company culture means much more to Heimdall Power than strong leadership alone. He names three things that characterize the team's culture – being passionate about being the best, being customer-centric, and, most importantly, having fun: “You have to laugh. You have to have a good time. [...] And I think we've been successful at building that culture, and that's why we're seeing the success.”
Nevertheless, the financial sustainability of the business is no less of a priority to the scale-up, especially in the midst of its growth: “If you're going to be sustainable, that is as much financially as it is helping the world. Because it doesn't help you that you're making the world greener if you go bankrupt in three years, right?,” the CEO adds.
Navigating the challenges
Like any other business, Heimdall Power has also had to conquer some challenges. One is the technical challenge of building a scalable product. The current sensor is Heimdal Power's fourth version, which the company has improved to the highest possible quality: “This is a learning process. Nobody gets that right on the first try. We have faced natural setbacks from a technology development perspective, and now we have a mature product,” the CEO says.
Maintaining a cohesive and effective team as it scaled from a small startup to a larger company is another challenge Heimdall Power has faced. Transitioning from a close-knit group to a more structured organization required new systems and processes to ensure everyone was aligned and informed. Hiring the right talent at the right time proved crucial. Jørgen has invested much of his energy into that: “I've hired, and I've fired, and there's nobody who's employed in this company that I haven't interviewed and personally vetted.”
Last but not least – while Heimdall Power is well-known in the industry today, the scale-up has also dealt with struggles of raising funding. Jørgen doesn't hide that it took them much time and effort to seal the deal: “It wasn't the lack of interest. It was just the time it took. [...] And I think we were lucky enough to raise more capital than we asked. So, in the end, it was a success, but it's been very exhausting.”
Joining the EIC Scaling Club
Being a part of the EIC Scaling Club has been an important milestone for the company. The scale-up looks forward to connecting with stakeholders across Europe, especially those connected to the political landscape: “It's [about] a broader set of stakeholders, politicians, and regulators knowing about our technology and its capabilities, and just starting to deploy,” Jørgen says. Hence, through participation in the EIC Scaling Club, Heimdall Power aims to access this group of professionals.
“We want to ensure that Europe understands what this kind of technology can do – it doesn't matter if it's ours or that of our competitors. [...] Because we need to make this energy transition happen.”
About the EIC Scaling Club
The EIC Scaling Club is a curated community where 120+ European deep tech scale-ups with the potential to build world-class businesses and solve major global challenges come together with investors, corporate innovators and other industry stakeholders to spur growth.
The top 120+ European deep tech companies will be carefully selected from a pool of high-growth scale-ups that have benefitted from EIC financial schemes, other European and national innovation programmes, and beyond.
The EIC Scaling Club is an EIC-funded initiative run in partnership by Tech Tour, Bpifrance (EuroQuity), Hello Tomorrow, Tech.eu (Webrazzi), EurA and IESE Business School.
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