InnoEnergy supports next generation drone technology by Hepta

InnoEnergy, the European company investing in solutions in the area of energy, cleantech, mobility and broadly understood smart technologies, invests into Estonian start-up, Hepta Airborne, who’s technology outperforms other drone solutions in the market. The financial support with great network of contacts gives Hepta Airborne a chance to enter into European markets and increases the efficiency of utility inspection in target countries more than 10 times.

Hepta Airborne has developed the next generation electricity infrastructure inspection technology, which assesses the state of poles, lines, insulators, transformers and other equipment in the most costful and complex locations. The solution is based on next generation drone technology and data processing platforms that provide technical analysis of collected data. Thanks to the solution, utilities and network operators receive a detailed overview of their assets, automated defect reports and detailed vegetation analysis.

Henri Klemmer, CEO of Hepta Airborne, agrees that support from InnoEnergy creates the opportunity to bring new technological solutions to the electricity grids in Europe and the world. „Apart from 200 000 EUR financial support, the greatest benefit is the extensive network of contacts behind InnoEnergy, which gives us all necessary tools to enter into EU market. We already have 90% of the grid inspections in our contract portfolio in Estonia. From executed projects we can say that the existing ways to inspect power lines can be replaced with multiple times more effective solutions in terms of costs, human resource and time. Inspecting power lines with our drone solutions is up to 11 time faster comparing to regular drone technologies.”

Lukasz Skarka, The Investment Manager at InnoEnergy comments the support: „Hepta has created an innovative and sustainable technology for infrastructure monitoring, which is carried out with drones. According to our thorough market and client studies, we believe, that there is a strong necessity for Hepta Airborne’s technological and business solutions in Europe and other parts of the world.“

Heleri Holm, Project Manager at InnoEnergy Estonian HUB at Tehnopol: “Our goal is to increase the number of Estonian sustainable energy companies in the InnoEnergy network and we are happy that negotiations between Hepta Airborne and InnoEnergy were so successful. Hepta Airborne defineately has the potential to make it to European markets and the support from InnoEnergy makes it all happen. We know, there’s more clean energy startups with the same potential out there and we encourage them to contact us at InnoEnergy HUB in Estonia.”

Hepta Airborne is the third Estonian start-up supported by InnoEnergy. Previously, the company has also invested into Skeleton Technologies and Thinnect.