SERBIAN TECHNOLOGY SAVES TIME AND MONEY WORLDWIDE

PERUN Technologies is a young Serbian company that, using its academic experience, offers fellow engineers and researchers tools and products that will accelerate their work on renewable energy sources, electric vehicles and smart grids, as well as training future professionals.

They are another team that received the support of the Innovation Fund, which they used to apply for a patent in Italy in May 2020. In the meantime, they upgraded the first LARA-100 product to the LARA-100K.

LARA is a tool for the development of modern energy devices, and PUMA (Power Universal Management Agent - PUMA) is conceived as a modest contribution to the coming energy efficient smart grids.

The Serbia Creates team talked with the co-founders, Marko Vekić and Stevan Grabić, about the development, technology, team, but also the importance of Serbia's support for technological innovations.

PERUN Technologies was founded in 2015 by a group of university professors and engineers in the field of power engineering and management, with a vision of contributing to the creation of an energy-safe world. How successful are you in that and how did your growth and development go?

Our vision is clean and affordable electricity. This, of course, is not just our vision, but an aspiration that is ubiquitous today, both in academic research and in industry. Starting from that, our first goal was to use our academic experience to design and offer fellow engineers and researchers tools and products that will accelerate their work on renewable electricity sources, electric vehicles and smart grids, as well as training future professionals.

Our first product LARA-100 was applied by the Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT) at the end of 2015 for the development of an electric tricycle for the purpose of green transport in Southeast Asia. After that, in the fall of 2016, we designed a device that became an agent in their experimental smart grid for the needs of the power systems laboratory at the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL, Switzerland).

These two demanding projects (AIT and EPFL) have enabled us to specialize our product LARA-100 in two important development axes: electric motor drives, as well as mains-connected assemblies. Cooperation with EPFL and work on micronets has led us to devise the concept of PUMA (Power Universal Management Agent) - an energy router for smart grids.

LARA-100K will be a unique combination of the most modern (state of the art) technology for making energy hardware and flexible software tools. This gives our upcoming product worldwide recognition, which confirms the strong interest in including it in their laboratories, the universities of Kiel, Manchester and Eindhoven.

You create various products, mainly hardware, but also software and dedicated "tailor made" solutions. Can we explain to our followers what this means and what your solutions really do and how they help other companies?

Our main product, as the Anglo-Saxons say "flagship", is the mentioned LARA, which consists of energy hardware, electronic circuit, control and communication part, as well as software. LARA is an open and configurable platform that can be configured to support the operation of various complex systems such as renewables, electric vehicles or microgrids.

In this way, LARA significantly saves money and time for users, as the same platform can be quickly and easily reconfigured (arranged as LEGO cubes) as needed if it is a research project in a company or a new lesson for students. at technical universities.

Last year and this year we were very happy to equip the entire power electronics laboratory at the Swiss EPFL with our LARAs. Users do sometimes ask for certain customizations, such as The University of Eindhoven, with which we are now talking about the possible introduction of our technology, while the University of Cologne, to which we delivered one LARA-100 a few days ago, wants to make the modifications itself. We are of course open to all possibilities.

PERUN Technologies is developing an efficient and sustainable solution in the form of an energy router to control electricity consumption in one or more households. How much will your solution really enable direct energy exchange, its storage between users, but also savings?

Our solution, PUMA is conceived as an electricity router that connects electrical devices, power sources such as solar panels, energy storage (battery) and e.g. electric vehicle within one household.

PUMAs in various households communicate with each other and thus enable efficient energy exchange in accordance with the needs and life habits of their owners. There are a number of technical solutions that must reach maturity before the idea of ​​a fully decentralized and energy efficient power grid can be fully realized, from the development of more efficient materials, batteries, to advances in decentralized management and information technologies such as blockchain.

PERUN, of course, currently has the capacity to contribute through PUMA only in a small part of this wide area, which concerns the stable operation of the router in the conditions of a disconnected electrical network.

You mainly work with foreign companies, and you turn to the export of your services. Is there a demand for the space of Serbia and what are the plans for participation in the growth of the Serbian IT industry and economy?

Our clients are mainly foreign university laboratories, and research institutes. We must say here that the additional impetus for work and development is given by the fact that reputable institutions such as Swiss and German universities with strict and high quality standards give us an advantage over their domestic companies in choosing specialized laboratory equipment.

Of course, this is not easy to achieve and we really try to give the term "Made in Serbia" weight in accordance with its modest capabilities. In the years to come, our development will go in the direction of PUMA, which is intended for both foreign and domestic markets. For the development of an energy router such as PUMA, technical solutions from energy hardware, electronics, software, communications, as well as artificial intelligence are needed.

There are already many very innovative and successful companies in Serbia, especially in the IT field, some of which deal with energy applications. We look forward to working with our domestic partners in this regard. In addition, there is great potential for cooperation with our entrepreneurs abroad, which can to some extent mitigate the severe consequences of "brain drain" and contribute to easier technology transfer.

And finally, although it has not existed for many years, you have managed to be recognized for your work and you can be an example to new young, emerging companies. What would you say to young, innovative and creative people who are ready to venture into some new, entrepreneurial waters?

We had and are lucky to learn from really great professional entrepreneurs with great experience through the association Serbian Entrepreneurs, which connects entrepreneurs in Serbia with our entrepreneurs in the diaspora.

The exchange of information, experiences and possibilities, as well as a critical review of planned future technical solutions and products by other colleagues from the association is extremely important in planning both technology development and business. Often, some initial idea would be experienced by a "cold shower" by other colleagues, but that is a huge value because it avoids a "cold shower" by potential users.

We would like to tell future young entrepreneurs that it would mean a lot to them to find a mentor who would advise them on how to more easily overcome "children's diseases" in the development of companies that can be frustrating and even fatal if not addressed properly.

Another piece of advice that we would dare to give, since we continue to learn a lot and make mistakes, is that the development of a new company must result from what new entrepreneurs really like to do and what they will not perceive as an additional effort. In that way, a really significant time dedicated to development is not understood as a difficult obligation, but as a natural activity that brings challenges, but also everyday satisfaction.

Finally, it will sound like a worn-out phrase, but it is essentially true: patience and self-confidence are needed: patience to persevere because the results must be paid full price in advance, and they come much later, and self-confidence to continue, despite numerous and unexpected obstacles.

Author of the text Serbia creates: https://www.serbiacreates.rs/vest/1265/srpska-tehnologija-koja-stedi-vreme-i-novac-sirom-sveta.php

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