Startup from Fortaleza is the big winner of the EDP Open Innovation award
Brazilian Team with preventive wind generator maintenance project was selected from among 15 finalists in global award
A team from Fortaleza (Cear‡) is the big winner of the first edition of the EDP Open Innovation Award. The project created by Brazilian startup company Delfos Predictive Maintenance was selected from among 15 finalists competing for the Û50,000 prize. The award ceremony was held last Wednesday (November 2) at the EDP headquarters in Portugal.
The team will now be invited to pitch their project at the EDP stand on Web Summit, the largest and most important event for technology startups in Europe, to be held on November 7-10. The Brazilian team will be joined by the two other best ranking teams in the competition, both from Portugal.
"Innovation in Brazil is in a very good moment right now and the EDP Open Innovation competition, with a Brazilian winner, confirms the rapid development trend of the startup ecosystem in the country", says EDP Director for Innovation Jo‹o Brito Martins.
Consisting of engineers Adam Muniz and Samuel Lima, along with Guilherme Studart as manager - all of them graduated from Cear‡ Federal University (UFC) - the winning startup stood out with a project for a failure prediction system to be used in wind power generation equipment. The team created a data-linking model that predicts turbine component wear and detects the need for preventive equipment maintenance, a device that can extend the lifetime of wind energy generation farms in Brazil.
Because wind turbines are mostly produced in Europe or in the US, they are manufactured to operate under much milder conditions than those obtaining in Brazil, says the project executive director Samuel Lima. Because of this, they undergo accelerated wear once they are deployed here. Delfos" project extends the lifespan of the devices and improves generation performance in wind farms, reducing equipment replacement costs.
With the goal of fostering entrepreneurship, EDP - a company engaged in energy generation, trading, services and supply - created the EDP Open Innovation competition by merging the EDP Innovation and Energy of Portugal awards. In addition to giving due prominence to projects that can change the market in the coming years, the competition is also a gateway into the EDP Starter program, a set of initiatives that aim to turn good projects into structured and duly funded business models.
Four other Brazilian teams reached the competition final, alongside Portuguese and Spanish teams. In the past few months, all teams joined an acceleration program held by the EDP Innovation Ecosystem in Portugal to hone their projects for the electric power industry. Even if they did not win the award, participants may be invited to join the EDP Starter program and receive funding from EDP Ventures, the Group global investment fund for startups.
