Urbio: artificial intelligence for urban energy systems
Urbio, a young Valais-based start-up, has set itself the mission of speeding up the transition to a zero-carbon building stock. Aware that 40% of CO2 emissions come from existing buildings and the sector's strong inertia, it has developed software capable of reducing the time spent planning energy systems by a factor of ten. Because while the clean technologies are there, it's the speed of implementation that's the problem.
In response to this challenge, Sébastien Cajot, Nils Schüler and Nicolas Sommer are now marketing an intuitive web platform that drastically speeds up and simplifies the current processes of data collection, prospecting and energy system pre-sizing. After a research and validation phase at EPFL Valais-Wallis, Urbio was founded in January 2020, marking the start of the entrepreneurial adventure.
Like Google Maps, but for energy
"Thanks to Urbio's artificial intelligence (AI), our users can proactively prioritize high-impact projects, while automating the design of energy solutions," says Sébastien Cajot, CEO and co-founder of the start-up. Aimed at energy suppliers, engineering consultancies and real estate players, the solution developed offers three complementary functionalities to its users. Firstly, it enables them to structure, combine and enrich their geospatial data. Secondly, customers can easily visualize their data in the form of maps and locate, for example, areas with high heat density for district heating or promising buildings for solar energy. Finally, the software can be used to design optimized energy systems for buildings or entire cities, generating different scenarios according to the customer's needs.
There's no shortage of use cases for this cutting-edge technology. Sébastien Cajot gives the example of solar contracting: "Our platform is like Google Maps, but instead of searching for restaurant times, our customers find all the energy data specific to buildings. Energy suppliers use it, for example, to target the best roofs to equip with solar panels. They can then quantify market potential, with data at both neighborhood and individual building level." Urbio's technology also lends itself to heat network planning, municipal energy planning and strategies for decarbonizing building stock.
In September 2021, the platform's first commercial release took place and, at the same time, Urbio raised 2 million francs. These two successes have enabled the company to expand its team, which now numbers some fifteen employees. The company currently has around twenty customers throughout Switzerland, including Romande Energie, CKW and Intep, and is also active on a European scale, particularly in Germany, where the decarbonization theme is booming.
Source : The Ark
