HomeFundingGerman-Portuguese cleantech startup ANNEA scoops up €1 million to help fuel Europe’s...

German-Portuguese cleantech startup ANNEA scoops up €1 million to help fuel Europe’s energy transition

On a mission to accelerate the energy transition by helping to make wind and solar assets more efficient, ANNEA has just secured €1 million of fresh funding. The funding for the cleantech startup, which is based across Hamburg and Lisbon, was co-led by Faber and Innopart. 

Founded in 2019, ANNEA was developed with an aim to help renewable energy companies reduce their operations and maintenance (O&M) costs. With Europe on the road towards net-zero and pushes for more renewable energy coming from society, governments and corporates alike, this market area is massive. There’s huge potential to help make the industry more efficient and an opportunity to make green energy more affordable. 

Dr. Maik Reder, ANNEA Founder & CEO, commented: “As the world-wide energy demand is continuously increasing, the renewable energy market needs to grow significantly within the next decade. Due to high O&M costs, the renewable energy industry faces various challenges when compared to conventional energy resources. ANNEA combines several cutting-edge technologies, such as Digital Twins, Machine Learning and physics-based modelling, to make renewables more cost-effective and reliable.”

ANNEA’s all-in-one platform covers the whole O&M process of renewable energy assets – bringing together the world of mechanical engineering and AI to make wind and solar energy more efficient. 

The platform creates digital twins of the assets and their components by leveraging data from existing sensors. Based on this, ANNEA can predict malfunctions and potential problems up to 12 months ahead. It also derives the ‘remaining useful lifetime’ on the component level, with a reported accuracy of 99.9%! 

Furthermore, if energy utilities monitor structural damages via drone images, these images can be directly ingested into the ANNEA Image Recognition module and are analysed in an automated process – without requiring any manual interaction. 

Recommendations for optimal maintenance procedures and repair actions are given out in a comprehensive and intuitive form through the platform user interface. The insights from ANNEA are highly actionable and valuable in making wind and solar energy more efficient and will no doubt incentivise the adoption of these technologies. 

Marcel Frenzel, ANNEA Founder & CCO, added: “ANNEA is investing the additional capital in stabilising and expanding its position in the renewable energy market by expanding the team of experts that combines deep technological knowledge in the industry with digitalisation. Capital will enable ANNEA to make its platform available to global industry players, while reliability will provide confidence in data-driven innovations that revolutionise operations and maintenance. With ANNEA, global industry players are leveraging hidden potential while making a significant contribution to net-zero emissions.”

By 2025, ANNEA hopes to become the number one international predictive maintenance company in the renewable energy sector. To do so, this funding will be used to expand the team and further the mission to contribute to achieving net-zero.

Patricia Allen
Patricia Allen
is the former Head of Content at EU-Startups. With a background in politics, Patricia has a real passion for how shared ideas across communities and cultures can bring new initiatives and innovations for the future.
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