envelio Annual Review 2021

2021 is drawing to a close. We are looking back with satisfaction and pride on a successful year – despite the pandemic and the associated challenges.

The year’s biggest highlight was the closing of our latest financing round, in which E.ON acquired a majority stake in envelio. In this new strategic partnership, we see the potential to expand our role as a leading clean tech company in the German and European region and to further scale our technology.

We are also excited that we could further expand our customer base and now cover about 20% of the entire German grid with our rollout customers only. Internationally, we also continued to grow: among others, we started projects with two DSOs in the United States, as well as with the Finnish grid operator Helen Electricity Networks Ltd.

Unfortunately, due to the global pandemic, we were just able to hold a few face-to-face meetings with our customers and partners this year. That is why the Enlit trade fair in Milan was a special highlight for us. We met many familiar faces and drew interest from a range of new contacts. Throughout the year, we used digital channels as an important alternative for discussion – and held 12 webinars on various topics in the field of grid planning.

The Intelligent Grid Platform as a state-of-the-art solution

Over the entire year, our software engineering team continuously developed the Intelligent Grid Platform and added new features to digitize and automate grid planning processes. In total, we launched 55 new versions, developed 64 completely new features, and created upgrades for 85 existing features. The new functionalities included Fast Track for fully automated evaluations of connection requests, or the automatic calculation of suitable grid reinforcement measures to resolve congestions. Many of the new features were featured in our Feature Insights  blog category.

Our successes

In 2021, envelio was nominated for several prestigious awards. As a finalist, we participated in “The Spark”, the German Digital Award from Handelsblatt and McKinsey. We were also ranked in the 2021 Global Cleantech 100 companies list by the Cleantech Group for the second year in a row. We also received a nomination for the category “Sustainability” at the Founder of the Year Award 2021 and appeared on the AI STARTUP Landscape as one of the most promising AI startups in Germany.

A strong team spirit

All this was only possible with our motivated team, to which we welcomed 11 new employees this year. The pandemic put us to the test again this year. Despite lockdown, workplace rules (presence only fully vaccinated, recovered or tested) and renewed home office duty, we go into the new year stronger as a team. As an organization, we have been examining since the beginning of the year how we define New Work for ourselves and what changes we need today and in the future. Our employees play a key role in this context as they – despite their own challenges – are committed and passionate about our shared vision.

envelio shines in a new look

The middle of the year was a special time for us. We gave envelio a completely new look with the enveliophant (our turquoise elephant logo) as our new trademark. Since then, the envelio design reflects our Core Values “Tech”, “Trust” and “Eco”. We changed our color from blue to turquoise, became overall more clean and modern. We also redefined our mission and vision. In the course of the redesign, we launched a completely new website – with a fresh and clear design, more details about envelio as a company as well as concrete use cases of the Intelligent Grid Platform.

Internal (organizational) developments

As a team and as a company, we are constantly evolving. In the spring of this year, we developed our “Leadership Why” in a joint leadership workshop. Since then, trust, openness and enablement have become even more central to our leadership culture. With the introduction of OKRs and the experiences from this year, we will start in 2022 with a more thoughtful process that incorporates what we have learned from the feedback from our employees.

We changed our way of working from SCRUM mode to KANBAN, which greatly increased the development speed of new Intelligent Grid Platform features. The new developments of the Intelligent Grid Platform gave our customers even more options to drive the energy transition together with us forward – quickly, easily and cost-effectively.

For 2022, we would love to…

… have more personal contact with our customers again.

… have a better political and legal framework to rapidly increase the share of renewables in distribution grids worldwide and to provide incentives for the digitization of power grids.

… see more women choosing a technical profession and submitting their applications to us.

… continue exciting discussions on challenges and solutions for the quick and cost-effective grid integration of renewable energies.

The entire envelio team wishes you a reflective end of the year, health and happiness as well as much success and innovative spirit for the new year!