Interview with Antonio Delgado Rigal, Artificial Intelligence PhD and Director General of AleaSoft, whithin the Spanish Newspaper Cinco Días. The article was published on Tuesday September 8th, 2015.
„The only chance to survive lies in continuous innovation“
Nowadays Aleasoft is a leading company specialized in the energy forecasting field. With constant innovation as a leitmotiv, after conquering the European market, they are now working to become a global benchmark.
Tell us about AleaSoft. What does it offer to the market?
We offer forecasting solutions for the energy industry. We have been providing our clients with products and services that focus on demand and prices within the energy forecasting field for 16 years now, but we also offer renewable energy forecasts, such as wind and solar power.
Currently you are leaders in your industry, but you haven’t achieved all this overnight. Which are the origins of the company and how did it evolve?
Our origins date back to research projects in the university environment. AleaSoft was founded in October 1999 as a spin-off of the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC). In fact, back then the UPC held a stake in our company.
Within our first year, Endesa was already our client and a few years after the foundation of our firm, the main electricity companies in Spain and in the rest of Europe became our clients.
What can you tell us about AleaSoft’s investment in R&D&I?
R&D&I represents the basis of the development of any innovative company. In a globalized world, the only chance to survive lies in continuous innovation.
At AleaSoft we try to engage professionals and high-level specialists in the technical and scientific field and we use a part of our benefits to continue to investigate and improve the quality of the models and the results of our forecasts.
Which companies of the energy sector do you address to?
We offer energy forecasting to transmission system operators (TSOs), generators, traders, retailers, distributors and big consumers in both the electricity and gas industries.
Today can we ensure that the use of new tools of Artificial Intelligence represents a competitive advantage?
Undoubtedly! We have developed a methodology that combines the most modern part of Classical Statistics with Artificial Intelligence techniques, more specifically, Neural Network. This allows high quality results and makes sure that the model automatically captures changes in the time series predictions.
Could the increase in electricity demand have been predicted by using your tools during the heat waves of this summer?
We can create scenarios for forecasts of very hot or cold months. This way, electricity companies can adopt measures concerning what they may need in order to generate enough electricity or predict very high prices. Furthermore, we have tools that not only allow us to make forecasts, but also probabilistic confidence intervals for both demand and price energy forecasting.
What is the future of AleaSoft?
AleaSoft plays an important role in the European market and has ambitions to provide products and services globally. We have a plan of growth and quality improvement, because we want to become a world reference within the energy forecasting field.
You can find the original version of the interview here:
Interview original version
