Origami: Creating a Green Energy World with Innovation
The world is approaching towards the energy system which will continue in the future, a shift for a more sustainable energy system. An important part of this approach will be the deployment of smart and green energy solutions in the business and household sector. Origami, a company that strives to mitigate its carbon footprint and follows global best practices related to Environmental, Social and Governance, provides software solutions through its platform, to help energy companies thrive amid more complex and volatile energy markets.
Peter Bance, CEO of Origami, came up with the concept for the company 12 years ago. He saw that companies were investing billions into energy assets but that once deployed, those assets were not being managed in a smart way. The need for this smart management, but also its complexity, would grow quickly with more solar and wind energy. Out of this sprang the idea for Origami – an energy technology company which would help inform and execute the thousands of decisions that needed to be made for a renewable-centric electricity system to run smoothly and efficiently.
In an interview with Insights Success, Peter Bance exemplified the significance of digital solutions to accelerate the energy transformation.
Below are the highlights of the interview:
Describe your company and its energy solutions which address all the needs of your customers.
Origami provides real-time energy optimization solutions to the energy market, operating at the forefront of the global energy transformation.
As renewables grow and energy markets shift closer to real-time, powerful technology is required. Origami’s modular suite of real-time, machine learning solutions enables energy companies to quickly make and execute informed decisions across physical and financial positions, and to do so at scale. Real-time monitoring and intelligent control of large numbers and types of energy assets enables energy traders to respond quickly to changes in the energy market, increase their profitability, access new revenue opportunities and improve trading positions.
Origami is defining a new category in the global energy sector with mission-critical software products to accelerate the transition to a net-zero world.
How does your energy solution differ from others?
Energy traders already use a lot of specialist software to help them make decisions. A big problem is that these are often difficult to integrate – which limits the quality of information that’s available to make decisions quickly and at scale. Origami offers an interoperable suite of real-time energy optimization tools for energy companies to select what they need today that can be integrated with more modules in the future. Origami provides better visibility for energy companies, with real-time monitoring and visualization of assets and markets. We also provide tools to decide how to use this information with modules that enable dynamic opportunity identification and decision support. We can also enable the automated execution of asset and market instructions. Origami offers the versatility for energy companies to integrate their own data and deploy bespoke machine learning models on our platform at scale.
Give a detailed description of the featured person’s influence over energy optimization solutions industry.
Peter has spent his career focused on building high growth ventures and technology commercialization, primarily in the cleantech sector. He was CEO of a combined heat and power business that he took public on the London Stock Exchange (AIM) and then became Entrepreneur in Residence at Octopus Investments working with their venture capital team and renewable energy business, before he founded Origami.
Alongside his role at Origami, Peter sits on several bodies which bring together senior business, government and academic voices from across the UK energy industry. He is a non-exec director on the Energy Systems Catapult – set up to accelerate the energy transition by applying expert ‘whole-systems’ thinking, and of the Energy Research Partnership – which provides high-level leadership to UK energy research. He is also a member of the UK Government’s Smart System Forum – a group of senior level experts and stakeholders in smart technologies, new business models and the energy system.
Could you throw some light on company’s mission and vision statement?
- Our vision: A green energy world, powered by smart technology.
- Our mission: To provide the time-critical visibility, decision-making and execution solutions required in an increasingly green energy system.
How are advance technologies bringing disruption in energy industry?
Energy industries around the world are undergoing huge disruption from new technologies – Renewables, storage, electric vehicles. The aim of course is to reduce our global carbon emissions, but these technologies are challenging for energy systems built largely upon coal and gas. Digital technology solutions aren’t really the disrupter here – they are providing the solution for energy systems not only to adapt, but to embrace and profit from these changes.
What is the greatest challenges energy industry facing and how are they best dealt with?
The energy transition presents a huge challenge, and big opportunities. The emerging system is faster, more complex and interconnected. As weather increasingly drives supply and demand, more decisions need to be made shortly before delivery. With renewable generation at its heart, the new energy system needs intelligent technology at its head.
Today’s tools were designed for a slower world. Manual workarounds, siloed information and batched processes limit the capability of energy companies to respond as the system speeds up.
We need a whole new approach using machine learning to optimise the use of energy in real-time; Real-time energy optimisation modules that integrate by design. Automated workflows, open frameworks for innovation, versatile micro services, configurable interfaces, delivering the information you need, when you need it.
What technologies are you leveraging to make your solutions more resourceful?
Our platform is hosted on the cloud (AWS). We are building machine learning, Big Data solutions – a few of the technologies we are leveraging are Kafka and Cassandra.
