Delfos, a virtual engineer software for renewable energy assets, has secured funding of €6.3 million in a seed round.
The round was led by Contrarian Ventures and Headline. Participating investors were DOMO.VC and EDP Ventures.
The capital round will fuel growth in Europe, as the company actively seeks collaborations with utility companies, owners of renewable energy assets, and operators/maintenance providers across the continent. This includes public entities, businesses, and asset management companies. Once Delfos has achieved enough traction in Europe and Latin America, it plans to expand to the United States in 2025.
Delfos has created real-time virtual engineer software that uses big data and artificial intelligence to automate performance and reliability workflow management for owners and managers of renewable energy estates—supplying all the data necessary for an engineer or C-level executive to oversee and maximize the return on investment, performance, and dependability of an asset.
CEO’s Vision for a Green Energy Transition
The CEO of Delfos Energy, Guilherme Studart, stated: “The renewables at the core of our future energy supply chain must be as efficient and reliable as possible if we are to achieve a green energy transition altogether. This is where Delfos enters the picture. Our technology is engineered to increase the energy output of every renewable asset, increasing its profitability, efficiency, and attractiveness to investors who want to support the energy transition to net zero.
With the use of a performance and reliability x-ray, utility companies and renewable energy asset managers can detect possible faults, maintenance issues, downtime risks, and performance improvements in real-time before they result in a loss of power generation thanks to Delfos’ software platform, which is available as a software as a service (SaaS) to B2B customers.
Delfos’ technology is sufficiently sophisticated to enable engineers to resolve a significant component fault three to five months before a major downtime event due to part failure, and to identify a performance issue in less than twenty-four hours.
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This is especially important for distant renewable energy sources, like solar power. KWH Analytics’ analysis indicates that underproduction and asset underutilization account for 92% of EBITDA loss in the solar energy industry. On the other hand, unexpected operating costs account for only 1% of solar’s lost profit. The primary challenge to boosting profitability in the renewable energy sector is optimizing the efficiency and minimizing downtime of existing assets.
“Renewables infrastructure investors want efficiency, stability, and to be able to make timely decisions well in advance of failures to ensure their sites are up-and-running 24/7 with no downtime,” stated Rokas Peciulaitis, Managing Partner of Contrarian Ventures. Predictive management from Delfos is a vital component of the software architecture that guarantees the durability of those assets. We are excited to partner with the exceptional Delfos team and find their current clientele and traction highly impressive. We also think that as they expand throughout the US and Europe in the upcoming years, they will be the industry leader in product quality.
Many solar, hydro, and wind farm owners are underperforming by as much as 10% in terms of energy generation, downtime reduction, and overall site efficiency across the renewable energy industry. Real-time reliability X-rays, which identify potential issues before they occur, can reduce downtime incidents by 95%, attributed to reliability and maintenance problems.
“Delfos combines management and AI in one of the most attractive sectors today, which is renewable energy,” stated Romero Rodrigues, Managing Partner at Headline. Due to the global demand for sustainable development and the expanding ESG agenda, companies such as theirs are unique in their ability to address pressing problems. We were also particularly enthusiastic about the startup’s prospects for global growth.