1. What made you join Utopus Insights at this stage in your career? What do you hope to bring to the organization, and gain in experience?
Having worked in the previous company for 12 years I was looking for a new challenge, and the opportunity to be part of developing and growing a relatively new product, Scipher.Fx, was very exciting. I have been impressed with the state-of-the-art digital platform developed at Utopus Insights.
2. Based on your decade-plus renewables experience in power forecasting, how have you seen customers evolve in their approach to digitalization in their day-to-day functioning?
Working in power forecasting has always been interesting, as you get to work with customers throughout the energy value chain, from wind/solar farm owners, energy traders, utility and grid operators. I have seen customer requirements evolve over the decade, which is typically led by government incentives and regulations, as well as technology advancements.
Customer requirements are typically region-specific. In growth markets in Africa and Asia, I have seen new regulations being introduced for power producers to submit forecasts to the energy off takers with accuracy incentives. In more mature markets across Europe, I have seen changes in energy trading mechanism, such as the shift from dual to single imbalance price mechanism to better award market participants who are helping to reduce the overall system balance costs, rather than minimizing their own portfolio’s overall imbalances.
On the topic of digitalization, I think the customers have evolved to put more focus on it to increase the value of their assets through smarter operations, and this also contributes to the bigger picture of enabling reliable integration of renewables to the grid. I believe that renewables power forecasting has been around for nearly two decades, so it’s one of the older digital services that has been supporting the growth of renewables. The advancements in data science and data engineering is enabling us to continuously improve forecast capabilities and develop new features to serve the evolving customer requirements.
3. What would you say to those who are considering a career in renewables software? Why should they join?
I would highly recommend it as its a very rewarding industry to work in. I’m proud to be part of the organization that is focused on helping the growth of renewables, and seeing the technical advancements and innovation in the industry is very exciting.
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Utopus Insights India Private Ltd.
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