src

In Free Electrons Like In Life: It’s Not Where You Start, It’s Where You Finish

When Rui Beon won Free Electrons last year he made an emotional speech that he claims “rarely happens”. He wasn’t expecting, this wasn’t an Oscar night where the winners already know they’re going to win because they’ve won everything during the award season. This was the first edition of Free Electrons. None of the startups really knew what they’re getting themselves into. They only knew that eight giant utilities didn’t come knocking on their doors every day.

But let’s start from the beginning. Rui was just a kid when he first started inventing gadgets, and having this passion for everything electronic and that’s why he decided to study electrical engineering. Little did he know how sealed was his fate.

BeOn Energy was founded in 2014, during an innovation program from EDP and they have been working together ever since. BeOn is a company developing solar technologies and it’s the first company in the world developing and producing PV panel integrated controllable microinverters, specially designed for energy self-consumption and smart energy management solutions.

The idea is nothing new, it’s been out there for over 20 years, but only in the past 10 years there’s the technology to make it possible. Rui admits that what caught the utilities attention was the simplicity, how quickly it can be installed and the democratization of the solar energy. Also, in two years the European Union is demanding that every building has renewable energy. So BeOn, as well as its clients, will be in pole position.

Throughout the program Rui says he never thought about the prize money, he believes that the true opportunity of Free Electrons is being able to work with some of the utilities more than winning the final prize. “Those startups are not competing for the best idea, they are there to do business”, says Rui.

Today BeOn still has the pilot with SP Group and another one with ESB, having other projects on the pipeline and is also working with other startups from Free Electrons, because, you may be surprised, they’re actually friends. It is not a matter of winning or losing, it’s a matter of joining forces and contribute to a better world (and do business).

It’s a win-win

You’re probably wondering what do the utilities gain with all this? Like every company in this world it has come the time for utilities to reinvent themselves, and there’s no such thing as rivalry among all eight utilities, they actually help each other out. Not only they know they’re stronger together but also they know that if they don’t understand the future business model they’ll end up struggling in the future, so it’s a win-win.

Future Free Electrons startups know one thing for sure: nothing comes easy, nothing comes that you are not supposed to have. Rui made it this far because he fought a lot. If you ever get the chance to see the video of his victory you’ll hear about his past. He was born poor, he didn’t have any utility at home, meaning he didn’t have electricity or water and he now works for eight of the biggest utilities in the world.

Rui doesn’t believe in coincidences not even when he found out that his great grandfather worked at a coal mine where now is the famous MAAT fed by BeOn energy and where the Portuguese module of Free Electrons took place. He doesn’t think it was destiny, he likes to think he built his own destiny.

Having spoken with people who worked with him during the program I know that he built his own destiny because he never gave up, he never lost focus. But you know, some things are just meant to be, it seems like all stars align for some people to get exactly what they’re supposed to. This was his future all along, it was always in his blood and it can also be in yours. You’ll only realize once it happens. Like he did. Whether you face it as destiny or hard-work or both, that’s up to you.

We use cookies to personalise content and ads, to provide social media features and to analyse our traffic. We use your information internally to serve the content of this website in the best format and personalise things based on analytics results logs. View more
Cookies settings
Accept
Privacy & Cookie policy
Privacy & Cookies policy
Cookie name Active

Who we are

Our website address is: https://freeelectrons.org.

What personal data we collect and why we collect it

Comments

When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.

An anonymised string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.

Media

If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.

Contact forms

Cookies

If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.

If you visit our login page, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.

When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select "Remember Me", your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.

If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.

Embedded content from other websites

Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.

These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

Analytics

Who we share your data with

How long we retain your data

If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognise and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.

For users that register on our website (if any), we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.

What rights you have over your data

If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.

Where we send your data

Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.

Your contact information

Additional information

How we protect your data

What data breach procedures we have in place

What third parties we receive data from

What automated decision making and/or profiling we do with user data

Industry regulatory disclosure requirements

Save settings
Cookies settings