- Estonian 2C Ventures invested EUR 1M in Renewcast, the Italian AI-powered renewable energy forecasting startup
- Forecasting accurately predicts site-specific wind and solar output, reducing imbalance costs and improving efficiency
- Renewcast outperforms legacy systems, serving 1.8 GW capacity with 20–40% higher accuracy
- Plans include global rollout, new features, and Series A funding by late 2026
This September, 2C Ventures—the well-known Estonian VC fund that specializes in CleanTech and ImpactTech (invested in Bisly recently)—became the sole investor in the Seed of EUR 1M for Renewcast. This Italian startup has developed an AI solution for top-precision renewable energy forecasts.
Reliable Forecasting for Affordable Renewable Energy
Simply put, renewable energy forecasting predicts how much electricity sources like wind turbines and solar panels will produce in the near future. It’s important because renewable power depends on weather, which can change quickly, making it harder to balance supply and demand on the grid. Accurate forecasts are vital for grid operators, utilities, and energy traders to plan better, reduce costs, and keep the power system stable.
Hendrik Reimand, Founding Partner at 2C Ventures
‘Affordable renewable energy is the foundation of transitioning to a sustainable economic model and ensuring energy independence. However, the rapidly increasing volumes and accelerating electrification of the economy make accurate forecasting ever more critical,’ 2C Ventures’ founding partner Heindrik Reimand comments.
The Birth of a Solution
Renewcast’s founder Fabio Nicoló (CEO) can boast about decades of experience in the corporate energy sector, as well as VC consulting. It is the latter side of his career that brought him together with the startup’s co-founder Ugo Mattoni (CCO) who is a seasoned energy executive.
It was in 2020 that they realized that, with the widespread of renewable energy, this sector’s structural need for comprehensive forecasting became very pressing and started working on their solution to the issue.
Market Mechanisms and Added Value
‘We need to understand that transmission providers prefer to make such forecasts with the help of market mechanisms. This is the easiest approach but it creates added value for the providers. We’re talking about EUR 5 per MW/h, it’s easy to calculate, how that is for 1 GW/h. This issue becomes particularly pressing if we remember that renewable energy de facto isn’t 100% CO2-neutral because it still needs to be balanced with traditional energy,’ Mr Nicoló explains.
In other words, ‘relying on market mechanisms’ means that instead of building their own forecasting models, grid and transmission system operators let energy producers or third-party services provide renewable energy forecasts. This shifts the responsibility and creates opportunities for added value services.
As such, if those forecasts happen to be wrong, grid operators or producers pay imbalance costs because the grid has to buy or sell extra electricity at higher prices. Accurate forecasting empowers the reduction of such costs and helps energy producers trade more efficiently. That’s why, for example, even a small improvement, worth around EUR 5 per MW/h, can add up to thousands of euros when scaled to GW/hs.
AI Meets the Grid
To tackle this issue, Renewcast’s forecasting is developed with AI and bound to the grid on the map with predictable weather behavior. It offers a ‘last mile approach’ with top-precision AI algorithms that translates weather forecasts into the digital twin of a facility, the platform’s deep learning framework.
Essentially, Renewcast takes general weather forecasts and uses its proprietary AI to predict exactly how much energy a specific wind or solar facility will produce. It does this by creating a digital twin of the facility and applying precise algorithms that consider the local conditions. This way, operators get highly accurate, site-specific forecasts they can rely on for planning and trading.
‘The relevant data includes the production data about the facility from the client and our autonomously acquired data about the weather conditions. It all gets assembled into a set for deep learning, and that’s how our forecasts are generated. With a quality model and accurate forecasting, it takes not more than 10 days in any given moment and place. We later update it either every week, or it gets updated via API in real time. We are web-based, so the client doesn’t need to install any additional software, let alone hardware,’ the CEO explains further.
Rare Events
It’s worth pointing out that there are ‘rare events’ that pose a challenge to the whole renewable energy sector. These are instances of unpredictable or extreme weather that make renewable energy forecasts error-prone.
‘What we do about it is what we can do: we flag those events, we study their pre-conditions to train the model further, ‘ Mr Nicoló tells ITKeyMedia.
Market Impact and Success Metrics
Renewcast’s solution has been in the market since December 2023, initially working with wind energy. Reportedly, there’s been 3 pilots globally, which led to 4 paying clients. In early 2025, the platform expanded to solar energy, which is also piloting globally at the moment.
Fabio Nicoló, Founder and CEO at Renewcast
The platform and its solution is said to have outperformed legacy forecasting systems with 20–40% higher accuracy, saving millions annually by reducing balancing costs. Serving clients with over 1.8 GW of installed renewable capacity, the company is rapidly expanding its reach across major energy markets.
‘The regular KPI for our sector is Normalized Mean Absolute Error (nMAE), the average absolute difference between the predicted values and the observed values normalized by the mean value observed. By this KPI, we are close to the leaders in the market. What we need is global recognition. Our overall challenge is about demonstrating security, reliability, scalability, and efficiency for all to see and be confident about our solution,’ Mr Nicoló comments.
‘We believe that Renewcast has the ingredients to become a global leader in energy intelligence: technical depth, early traction, and a clear commercial roadmap,’ Mr Hendrik adds.
Global Expansion and Other Plans
The new funding is meant to accelerate Renewcast’s global commercial rollout and reinforce its position among the world’s top renewable forecasting technology providers. The global commercial rollout for late 2025. Geographically, this includes the EU, India, South America, and other regions where the company will expand its commercial team.
Other plans include:
- According to the founders, Renewcast also continues working on new features which will be announced throughout H2 2025.
- As per the SAFE round’s conditions, additional investors may join in and add up to EUR 1M to the current round.
- Series A round is to be expected around late 2026.
‘This new investment is a vote of confidence in our long-term vision. Our team is growing, our commercial engine is ramping up, and our technology has proven it can deliver measurable value. We aim to be among the top 5–10 renewable forecasters globally within the next one to two years. With this funding, we will consolidate our tech team, scale our commercial efforts across Europe, the US, Latin America, and Asia, and prepare the company for institutional growth,’ Mr Nicolò concludes.
Turning unpredictable weather into reliable, site-specific forecasts that reduce costs and improve grid stability poses a critical challenge in the renewable energy sector. Blending AI, deep learning, and digital twins allows Renewcast to enable energy producers and grid operators to plan more efficiently and capture significant financial value. As renewable energy continues to grow globally, solutions like Renewcast’s are essential for making the transition to a cleaner, more resilient, and economically sustainable energy system.
Kostiantyn is a freelance writer from Crimea but based in Lviv. He loves writing about IT and high tech because those topics are always upbeat and he’s an inherent optimist!
