Balun Energy

Building the Energy Intelligence Hub

When Giovanni Superti‑Furga approached me in late 2023 with the idea for Balun Energy, I knew we had something special. As someone who’d spent years applying machine learning to various domains, the challenge of renewable energy forecasting felt like the perfect intersection of technical complexity and real‑world impact. Climate change, regulatory changes and market volatility makes energy forecasting more relevant with every year. Incremental optimizations to power forecasts lead to massive benefits even for a single wind turbine, and there’s a lot left on the table for optimization.

Image by Andreas Senftleben from Pixabay

Together with Giovanni and Josef Schenk, we raised funding and built a 7-strong team to tackle these challenges. Since then our team has crafted several incredible pieces of software, such as our Energy Foundation Model, which produces forecasts for 20% of Austria’s wind capacity, our forecast comparison/evaluation tool (Eva), and our electricity price/cost valuation tool (Val).

The Technical Challenge

Traditional wind forecasting relies heavily on numerical weather prediction models, but these miss crucial hyperlocal effects that dramatically impact actual energy generation. That’s why we go beyond meteo data and tap directly into the treasure trove of real‑time sensor information (SCADA data) from wind turbines themselves

• Physics‑Informed Neural Networks – models that understand the fundamental physics of wind energy conversion while learning from data
• Transformer architectures – to handle the sequential, multi‑scale nature of energy time series.
• Real‑time SCADA integration – processing turbine sensor data every 10 minutes to continuously refine predictions.

Scaling the Vision

We’ve designed our Energy Foundation Model to work across different turbine types, weather conditions, and geographic regions. With our international team of seven engineers representing nine nationalities, we’re creating a platform that can optimize renewable energy operations globally.

Our day‑ahead forecasts now rank among the world’s best, and we’re already processing data for 20%¹ of Austria’s wind capacity. ~€3 million² in backing awarded from Hans(wo)men Group, PUSH Ventures and government grants (including AWS Seed DeepTech and FFG Basisprogramm) is letting us expand rapidly while maintaining our focus on technical excellence. Every accurate prediction we make helps accelerate Austria’s path to 100% renewable energy.

Balun in the Spotlight

• https://www.balun.energy/team
• https://brutkasten.com/artikel/balun-investment
• https://projekte.ffg.at/projekt/5124160
• https://brutkasten.com/artikel/diese-startups-aus-oesterreich-treiben-die-energiewende-voran

1: If you count all the capacity of all our pilot projects
2: State money comes with string attached