Greenbird Integration Technology announced today that the company has been awarded the European Commission grant under the EU’s research and innovation program, Horizon 2020 SME Instrument, Phase 2.
Horizon 2020 aims to secure Europe’s global competitiveness by funding high-potential innovations in the EU. Horizon 2020 EU funding supports Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SME) with breakthrough innovation projects. The highly competitive fund offers Europe’s brightest and boldest innovators the funding of breakthrough ideas with the potential to create entirely new markets or revolutionize existing ones.
Greenbird qualified as a SME under the European Innovation Council’s (EIC) definition and achieve a total score of 14.25 out of 15, which indicates “Very good to Excellent” in the appraisal scale. It was awarded a grant from the Horizon 2020 fund, due to its ground-breaking and innovative Utilihive digital integration hub.
What is Utilihive Digital Integration Hub?
Utilihive is a digital integration hub and domain specific integration platform developed specifically for Utilities. It enables enterprises to harness new cutting-edge technologies to utilize data and create new end-user services in the energy sector.
Utilihive Accelerates Smart Grid Technologies
Focus on smart grids and smart grid technologies has grown significantly over the last few years as they represent key enablers towards a low carbon energy scenario. The smart grid promises to drastically change the way power is produced, exchanged and traded. In 2017, almost 40% of the 281 million electricity customers in Europe had a smart meter, a share that is set to increase to 70% over the coming five years.
Each smart meter system is unique, varying according to the regulatory system, business objectives and design of the existing grid. Therefore, the design, deployment and maintenance of the smart meter system involves many challenges.
The traditional system integration approach is inefficient and delays utilities’ digital transformation, due to:
- Expensive and long deployments
- Poor flexibility and expensive scale up
- Failing business case that drive innovation
Greenbird’s Utilihive platform has a unique out-of-the box approach which rapidly speeds up, data integration and digital transformation.
Horizon 2020 funding and The Future for Utilihive
Utilities across Europe, the Middle East and Asia have started utilizing Utilihive to accelerate the ongoing energy revolution. Due to increased interest and rapid growth in markets, Greenbird will be extending the Utilihive Digital Integration Hub (2.0) with capabilities for artificial intelligence and machine learning to enable the development of intelligent and self-learning applications for the industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) such as Smart Cities, Smart Production, and Industry 4.0.
Horizon 2020 EU Funding will enable Greenbird to further develop its Utilihive Integration Hub and enable utilities to make the most of these new technologies.
Thorsten Heller, CEO and Co-Founder at Greenbird, “We are delighted to receive this €1.9 million grant from the European Commission, but what is most important, and rewarding is to see the value that we are being recognized for: our innovative approach, our understanding of the utility market needs and the significant impact that our technology can bring to changing the way our cities and society will work in the future.”
About Greenbird
Greenbird is a Norwegian software company headquartered in Oslo. The company is established as a leading company for integration solutions in the energy industry. Greenbird delivers the integration service Utilihive, a state-of-the-art digital integration hub accelerating the energy revolution by enabling smart cities and digital grids.
