Start-ups from Schneider Electric and Microsoft's joint accelerator are transforming the energy sector in Europe with artificial intelligence

On 9 January 2020, Schneider Electric, and Microsoft, hosted six start-ups selected for  the joint program AI Factory for Green Energy, at a Demo Day held at Station F  in Paris (France).

To accelerate the transformation of the energy sector in Europe through artificial intelligence (AI), Schneider Electric and Microsoft launched a call for projects in July 2019 from start-ups working on improving energy consumption predictions and use through learning, energy optimisation, and database services for buildings. In September, a panel of employees from Schneider Electric, Microsoft and other program partners (Inria – French National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology; Sigfox; Elaia; Energize Venture and France Digitale) selected the successful start-ups from the 40 applications received from seven European countries. In October, six start-ups entered the accelerator, including:

• Accenta, developing a low-carbon heating and cooling system for buildings using geothermal heat storage and AI.
• BeeBryte, working on automatically controlling heating and cooling equipment, as well as batteries and charging stations, in real time.
• Craft AI, provides an AI API enabling product and operational teams to quickly deploy and run explainable AIs. craft ai decodes your data streams to deliver self learning
• Meteo Swift, uses AI to provide wind and solar power forecasting tools, by cross-referencing the data collected with the weather forecast.
• Eco-Adapt-comprehensive predictive maintenance solution for electric rotating machines.
• Smartive- intelligent platforms to improve the operation and efficiency of the wind power market.

Over the three-month acceleration period, start-ups were supported by Schneider Electric employees and its Innovation at the Edge program that transforms bold ideas into the solutions needed for a sustainable, digital new electric world. Tools such as Schneider Electric Exchange, the  open digital ecosystem for solving sustainability and efficiency challenges and Microsoft’s Azure, the open and flexible cloud computing platform were provided to the start-ups. Microsoft technical experts shared personalised support to optimise their AI and cloud solutions. At the end of this programme, Schneider Electric plans to continue collaborating with at least one of these young companies, creating new solutions with them, marketing some of the solutions developed or even offering direct investment.

"Schneider Electric is delighted with the success of the AI Factory for Green Energy program, developed in collaboration with Microsoft, our long-standing technological partner. It not only demonstrates the vitality of the European start-up ecosystem in the energy sector, but also shows how collaborating between large groups can be a quick way to boost innovation", said Rodolphe Heliot, Business Incubation Director at Schneider Electric. "We believe that we are able to offer our customers new and innovative solutions to overcome current energy and environmental challenges as a direct result of this type of collaboration" .