Fleet managers in Luxembourg can get help navigating the world of EVs and renewable energy volatility when software firm RiDERgy establishes its offices in Luxembourg in 2022.
The startup, which was selected as part of Luxembourg’s Fit 4 Start acceleration programme, plans to establish itself at the Luxembourg-City Incubator within the second quarter of 2022.
“We aim to establish the commercial side in Luxembourg, given the multilingual character of the country,” CEO and founder Claudio Geyken told Silicon.
The idea for RiDERgy grew out of Geyken’s interest in the renewable energy transition in Germany, where he was raised. “For me it’s a given that it will be mainly wind and solar in the future”, he says, adding that EVs will “play a major role because they have a huge power volume and capacity in their batteries.”
He says that EV batteries as a resource for the energy transition were underexploited until recently because manufacturers were still innovating. “When Tesla and other OEMs started to produce EVs, then major forces aligned.”
“One of the major objectives for this year is to get 6000 people under our operations.”
Claudio Geyken
One of the last remaining barriers the German-Italian national sees for the renewable energy transition is the volatility of the renewable energy market which, if poorly managed, can eat into margins in the logistics sector.
“One thing that’s often not appreciated is that EVs can have a cost potential that’s pretty high in reducing costs if they’re using solutions like ours,” the entrepreneur says, adding: “You need to have data-driven approaches to understand the energy systems data points, charging infrastructure data points, the vehicle data points, making interconnections between systems like chargers, vehicles and energy systems software.”
Monetising Volatility
RiDERgy proposes to help EV fleet managers master the volatility of the energy market by advising them on how to get the most cost effective infrastructure and tariffs by “leveraging the energy systems’ value potential.” Simply put, RiDERgy pledges to help fleet managers monetise volatility, by charging vehicles at the right time, i.e. when solar and wind energy are most abundant.
RiDERgy has a proof of concept for its digital consulting and software solutions and hopes to secure its first customer by March 2022. “One of the major objectives for this year is to get 6,000 vehicles under our operations,” says Geyken.
The entrepreneur says he chose Luxembourg because of the many multinational companies already based here, as well as logistics giants like Amazon.
Geyken said the country’s Fit 4 Start programme, which focuses on ICT innovation, was also a major attraction. “In the EU there are not so many programmes as good as the one in Luxembourg, in terms of seriousness and equity funding,” he says.
