“The world cannot be changed with big ideals alone, we also need technological solutions that work and can be scaled,” says Roel Bleumer, founder and CEO at Volta Energy. “That’s why our core business is to implement smart innovations that disrupt polluting business as usual. Sure, it’s important to dream, but actually taking action might be more important in the end. We have a long road ahead of us, so our positive impact on the energy transition shouldn’t wait, we should start today.”
Volta Energy aims to chip in to the much needed energy transition by rendering polluting and wasteful diesel generators irrelevant. Diesel generators have since long been the go to energy source for applications and projects in need of off-grid, high reliability, heavy-duty power supply. Volta now offers its mobile sun-powered generators worldwide, after having started research,development and production from their parents’ backyard just seven years ago.
A beautiful challenge
“Just seven years ago, we started development from a shed in our parents’ backyard. Today, five hundred of our sun-powered generators are at work in locations throughout Western Europe,” Roel underscores his company’s massive growth.
Roel: “Generators tend to be needed in many locations. Think of roadbuilding: when a new road is being built, there’s generally no power supply available on site. For the longest time, highly polluting diesel generators would be used. We now offer a sun-powered alternative with similar mobility that is far more efficient and sustainable.”
To them, the energy transition provides for a beautiful challenge that they can contribute to tackling. “The energy transition can be accommodated to a great extent by technological interventions. We think it’s great that we can use all of our technological knowledge and expertise to this important end,”Roel says.
Specialized insights
When they started the BeStart program back in 2021, their technological know-how was on point, but they didn’t have much prior business experience. Roel: “The program resonated with us right away. It really made us aware of all the things we were fairly clueless about. It was so helpful to be able to learn from other companies’ experiences that had gone before us.”
“Every startup company, regardless of its core business, is confronted with the same growing pains. It’s a matter of organizational theory, really,”Roel says. “Due to our participation in BeStart, we were able to anticipate some of our challenges beforehand. It helped us to maneuver some of the hick-ups in our growth process far easier than we would have otherwise. Basically, we were far better prepared for what was to come.”
“It makes so much sense to educate yourself about the theory surrounding entrepreneurship in general, and scaling up specifically. It has immensely benefited our business since,” Roel underscores the importance of their participation in the BeStart program. “It’s fair to say that, without BeStart,we would have experienced significantly less growth. The program as well as its guidance has accelerated our growth, simply because we were surrounded by people that knew the things we didn’t know.”
“Our average growth has been over 100% annually. If you grow that fast,you need specialized insights in order to be able to contain that growth level. That’s what BeStart meant to us: if you know how to grow fast, you can use all of these insights to set up solid foundations for your company,” he concludes
