Hugo Stappers remains excited by the opportunities presented via Hitachi Energy post the acquisition of Pioneer a while ago when I caught up with him to see how things were going recently. With the energy transition and all the other trends in the power industry, Hugo sees that customers and prospects need “systems that can help in the renewable energy market. Tools that update faster, can caterto short-term markets, have better technology to interface to other solutions for things like forecasting, algo trading, exchanges and so on. Most of the legacy solutions on the market are incapable of this and are designed with older technology,” he told me adding, “They also need to capture green certificates as well.” He went on to add a number of other important criteria like handling PPA’s and the life cycle management of those green certificates as well.
Hugo describes himself as incredibly busy. Part of that he tells me is due to excitement at Hitachi Energy regarding the energy trading areas of the business requiring him to conduct a lot of internal training, a lot of support for other sales resources as well as his day job. Additionally, he says that the market is robust right now with lots of leads, RFPs and activity. “There is incredible demand at the moment – especially in Europe,” he said.
“The Pioneer business has clearly been elevated by becoming a part of Hitachi Energy,” he told me. Sales are going well and there is a strong drive to be proactive internally. As a result, we have closed business globally in geographies like South America and Asia-Pacific where Pioneer had no previous presence. With electrification and net zero, it can only become more exciting as the needs and narrative move squarely into Hitachi’s sweet spot, he told me. “We have so many complementary products and services that are offering in this space can be said to be unique,” he told me. There is still plenty of work to be done says Hugo. Building and executing the strategy, hiring new people, building implementation alliances as well as educating and integrating into the broader Hitachi Energy for increased leverage are all on going. And we will check back in a few months to find out more.
