GB’s nPlan wins Elia innovation challenge

GB startup nPlan with a tool focused on derisking energy projects was named winner of Elia’s latest Open Innovation Challenge.

The London based software company has developed an AI powered platform for project management with application so far in the energy sector as well as in buildings and transportation.

Trained on datasets from some 0.75 million construction schedules, it is declared to be the largest collection of past programmes, with the technology looking into the future to tackle project risks before they become issues.

In making the award the judges considered nPlan’s solution offering many advantages to TSOs and easy to scale up.

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With an award of €50,000 (US$53,000) nPlan is set to roll out their project within Elia Group.

Catherine Vandenborre, CEO ad interim of the Elia Group, commented that it was a difficult decision for the jury to make.

“Ultimately, the feasibility and the concrete possibilities for implementation were the deciding factors.”

She adds that all the candidates had very interesting and good ideas and that the group can continue to work with several of them.

“The dynamic nature of a startup can be refreshing. So in all this competition helps us to create an ecosystem and help us in our ambitions.”

The challenge, the seventh of its type, was focussed on capex delivery with proposals sought in the areas of planning, design, project management and the supply chain.

A total of 95 startups applied, from which five were selected as finalists.

The other finalists, with which Elia intends to further explore their projects with the possibility of additional partnerships and collaborations, are as follows:

Avaly from Germany has a solution that helps projects gain local support through their 360o acceptance navigator.

Continuum Industries from the UK has the Optioneer solution to accelerate and derisk line and cable routing planning.

Neanex from Belgium presented Fundamend, which creates a digital twin of the asset and project to connect, enhance and structure all its different data.

EHAB also from the UK uses accurate forecasting to help companies to avoid the weather-related delays – an issue affecting almost half of projects.