Hitachi Energy Positions Around the Energy Transition
Hitachi Energy occupy an interesting position as a vendor from our perspective as analysts. In earlier versions of our published book on CTRM software, we highlighted the asset heavy side of the industry as in need of a software toolset that was a tad different to merchants, traders and so on. With the energy transition, our observation is even more relevant now than it was back when we wrote that book and Hitachi Energy are targeting that very niche.
These days of course, many of those assets can be distributed and smaller-scale renewables or storage but owners of these assets require more than just a trade management solution. According to Hugo Stappers at Hitachi Energy, their requirements are best met by an Energy Portfolio Management solution or EPM as he recently defined in a LinkedIn article. “Our EPM vision is resonating well in the industry,” he recently told me. “Not everything can be done in an ETRM, you need things like modelling, forecasting, optimizing and so on, yet all of these solutions had better work together seamlessly.”
Hitachi Energy is active in all regions and is seeing success with its approach. For example, it recently signed Contact Energy where Contact Energy has launched “the first stage of its new cutting-edge wholesale trading platform, powered by Hitachi Energy’s TRMTracker. With increased automation, real-time insights, complex calculations made easy, robust risk management and more – the platform is going to transform our trading capabilities,” a LinkedIn post by the company said. However, Hugo told me that it has also signed a sizeable Australian entity for its ETRM and the largest power company in Japan for its counterparty billing solution. Meanwhile, elsewhere, it has new customers in Europe for its ETRM including a new customer in France, an asset optimization signing in Canada, and an environmental services firm had take on board its ETRM in North America as well as a transmission grid planning win in Saudi Arabia.
On the product side it is also innovating releasing its Nostradamus AI forecasting solution and making its Velocity Suite Power prices available on Google Cloud console. The company has a committed roadmap and investment plan for its portfolio of products too according to Hugo. “We truly see this committed roadmap as a differentiator,” he said. The company has dedicated product managers and is investing and building out its portfolio around its target market.
For Hugo, the energy transition often means that prospective customers are trading a larger mix of commodities including allowables, for example. These are all interconnected and this results in more complexity. “Businesses that run on spreadsheets or legacy solutions are under serious pressure to move to better software,” he said. He added that Hitachi is also seeing more interest in short-term market forecasting including greater precision within those forecasts – another area that it has solutions for.
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