Insight by Volue continues to deliver quality for its customers

When I speak to our stakeholders, I always emphasise the purpose and positioning of Insight by Volue. We enable our customers to navigate the energy transition and, in doing so, deliver a more sustainable and profitable future. To achieve this, we provide comprehensive power market data and forecast analyses, empowering energy professionals worldwide to make informed decisions in complex and ever-evolving markets. 

With that context in mind, it is increasingly clear to those in the sector that the power system is becoming predominantly weather driven. This shift accelerated significantly during 2024, and I fully expect it to gain even more momentum in the coming year and beyond. Rest assured; we are well prepared for this.  

Looking back, I am proud of the impact of our work over the last year. However, knowing everything we have planned for 2025 is even more exciting. Because of that, I am confident that we will continue to deliver success and drive value for our clients in the energy sector. 

Volue leads the way  

Advancements in artificial intelligence (AI), including machine learning algorithms, generative models, and language models, are fundamentally reshaping the market landscape. These tools continue to provide significant value in the short-term power market.​ 

Volue leverages decades of curated data and world-class mathematical models. When combined with unparalleled AI models crafted by our energy industry experts, we have been able to position Insight by Volue to effectively harness the power of diverse technologies to tackle complex challenges. 

I often speak about a so-called ‘AI winter’ and how we must all work to overcome this when it happens. The term relates to a period marked by reduced interest and activity in AI due to unmet expectations, technical limitations, or even economic pressures. These downturns occur when AI fails to deliver on ambitious promises, often leading to disillusionment and diminished research efforts.  

We are all aware that AI is becoming an essential tool in our daily lives, regardless of the role or sector we operate in. However, it's crucial to remain innovative and not rest on our laurels, so that’s exactly what we are doing. When I say that our team has genuine AI and machine learning expertise, I truly mean it. 

Take energy consumption, for example, a critical consideration for the continued success and advancement of AI. Running a trained AI model, as we do, is not highly energy or compute-intensive, compared to other solutions on the market. This is because our development team and data scientists possess deep expertise in building and deploying machine learning models. This expertise underpins our ability to implement solutions like demand forecasting, where we have successfully applied machine learning algorithms. 

Our experts excel at analysing complex problems, selecting the right algorithms, and applying them effectively to achieve optimal results. This unique skill set gives us a strong competitive edge and highlights the value of our team's knowledge and expertise. Such capabilities are indispensable for driving the future of AI development and it will form the cornerstone of our growth over the coming years.  

The impact of Insight2Zero  

Last year we announced our Insight2Zero programme to the market, and I was proud to see that it was well received. The goal of the Insight2Zero development initiative was to bring our forecasting and decision support tools in line with the new era of technological advancements I mentioned above.  

Towards the end of the year, we announced the integration of an innovative AI-based weather forecast into our weather-driven fundamental models. This innovation enhances the accuracy and utility of our wind power predictions, offering significant value to power market actors relying on precise weather insights for energy forecasting and decision-making 

These new AI-weather-based fundamentals integrate forecasts from our partner, Jua, with these forecasts also complementing our existing numerical weather model inputs. 

The enhancements in AI-based weather forecasting continues to increase and those not taking advantage of the changes will quickly lose out. It is no longer enough to simply be aware of AI-based forecasting and I am proud that we have carved out a strong position as a market leader across Europe and Japan.  

But we will not stop there.  

Insight Beyond Zero – looking to the future  

The introduction of Insight2Zero was welcomed by the sector but we always strive to do more, and this year will be no different. We want to revolutionise long-term power forecasting in a renewable driven power system. As part of that, we are working on a new power market simulator. While we will announce greater details on this over the coming months, I wanted to touch on the benefits it will bring, and the progress we have already made regarding its development.  

When in place, its use will empower the energy transition further by delivering cutting-edge long-term analytics solutions that enable stakeholders to navigate and thrive in volatile, renewable-based power markets.  

We know that currently all the existing options for the market were either developed for fossil driven power systems with high baseload capacity or focused on hydro. Indeed, the latter only had around two models. Our work will change this. We are excited to bring our new solution to the market and I look forward to announcing more on this later in the year.  

Ensuring success for Insight by Volue – the strength of our team remains key  

Transparency has always been key to how we work, communicate, and collaborate as a team. We aim to share ideas openly and seek continuous input from everyone. While being geographically dispersed may seem like a challenge, I view it as an opportunity. Our customers span the globe, and having a global team enables us to deliver a unified vision tailored to diverse requirements by country, sector, and role.  

We also leverage our own insight for market communication and product development, truly working as a cohesive team without being limited by geography or similar barriers. Of course, meeting in person remains vital to building our culture, and we prioritise coming together at meaningful points throughout the year. Fostering this shared culture is essential to our success and I place a great deal of value on it.  

Ensuring data quality 

We actively engage with our customers to gather and understand their feedback, particularly around the quality of data, which remains a critical priority for them. To address this, we have built a strong team focused on developing and implementing a groundbreaking hydrological model set to launch this year. This will be a truly unique product, unmatched in the market. 

Hydrology requires ‘memory’ and an understanding of factors like soil moisture or snow water equivalent in mountains over time. Unlike traditional AI, which applies machine learning algorithms to enhance models over short-term horizons, our approach integrates fundamentals directly into the learning process. This end-to-end system takes data from input to output, fundamentally learning the physical processes in between, setting it apart from current AI applications. While AI's primary drawback has always been the time needed to train models, the advantage is the significantly faster performance once trained. This makes our approach both innovative and efficient and I look forward to sharing more information later this year.  

As we step into 2025, our commitment remains steadfast: to empower our clients with the insights and tools they need to thrive in a rapidly transforming energy landscape. Together, we will navigate the challenges, seize the opportunities, and continue shaping a more sustainable and prosperous future for the energy sector.