Andy Booke Of gridX On The Future Of The Internet of Things (IoT), And How It May Improve Our Health & Our Lives

An Interview With David Leichner

Stay connected. Read news on new IoT applications, focus on networking and make use of your contacts to ensure that you stay at the forefront of the industry. I have met many mentors, investors and partners at events and it is so important to use these opportunities and stay connected.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is beginning to become more mainstream. Millions of people use Fitbit health trackers, Nest smart thermostats, and Ring doorbell cameras, which are early examples of IoT. These are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the potential commercial applications of IoT. IoT has the potential to change the way cities are run, the way our healthcare is managed, the way our cars communicate, and the way our supply chains and manufacturing are utilized. But how exactly will IoT improve our lives? How can it improve our health? What are the new IoT technologies that we should expect to see around the corner? How does one create a successful career in the IoT industry? In this interview series, we are talking to business leaders who are incorporating IoT into their business or who are developing IoT applications, who can share stories and perspectives about the future of IoT. As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Andreas Booke.

Andreas Booke is co-founder and managing director of the smart grid company gridX. The company now employs more than 80 people at its two locations in Aachen and Munich, Germany. In order to make clean energy accessible to everyone at all times, Andreas has developed the digital energy platform XENON, which connects decentralized energy systems and continuously optimizes them using IoT and artificial intelligence.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started in the IoT industry?

I studied electrical engineering and mechatronics in Aachen. While working as an engineer in a large technology company and as a researcher at the university, I developed new IoT and cloud technologies and brought them to market. These experiences in industry and research gave me the tools to revolutionize the energy industry today as a CleanTech entrepreneur and to offer individual solutions for the energy sector to customers across the full energy spectrum.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

I would have to go with the moment my business partner David and I first came up with the idea of an IoT solution for energy. We were traveling through Ecuador and after experiencing first-hand how unreliable energy systems are — and how significantly this intermittency affects societies around the world — we sketched out an idea on a napkin for an IoT solution that connects and controls distributed energy assets. We realized that by using IoT, energy flows can be constantly managed and optimized and the entire system becomes more efficient and resilient. This napkin became the foundation of our product today and we actually still have it as a reminder of how gridX first started.

Ok wonderful. Let’s now shift to the main focus of our interview. Can you tell our readers about the most interesting IoT projects you are working on now?

Our XENON platform uses sophisticated IoT infrastructure to connect and control distributed energy assets — from electric vehicles to solar panels to batteries. I am currently most excited about our self-service platform, which is being rolled out in the coming months. This will allow energy providers, operators and manufacturers to integrate renewable energy assets and build energy applications by simply pressing a few buttons. The self-service configuration takes our IoT solution for energy to a new level of ease, comfort and speed that has previously not been seen in the energy industry. Rather than waiting months to get clean energy projects off the ground, companies will be able to get the ball rolling in just a few minutes.

How do you think this might change the world?

Climate change is the biggest challenge of our time. And by making renewable energy more scalable, cost-efficient and reliable, our XENON platform is a key tool to ensure that the energy transition takes place within the necessary timescales. Our new self-service platform makes it even easier, faster and more affordable for companies of all sizes to adopt cutting-edge technology that will make renewable energy more widespread. The clock is ticking and our solution will be pivotal in ensuring the accessibility and affordability of clean energy projects.

Keeping “Black Mirror” in mind, can you see any potential drawbacks of this technology that people should think more deeply about?

It is well known within the IoT space that with greater interconnectedness comes a greater risk of cybersecurity threats — in other words, the system is only as strong as its weakest link. Interoperability is particularly important in scaling renewable energy because it is inherently intermittent and decentralized. Only by connecting assets through the Internet of Things can energy flows between them be constantly optimized. But with this also comes a potentially higher attack surface. For example, if not properly secured, a hacker could potentially gain access to the load profiles of a person’s household, which could indicate when they are on holidays. To prevent this, companies should think more deeply about the people, processes and technology they have in place to consistently mitigate cyber risks. The energy industry in particular must work more collaboratively and transparently to ensure that power systems always remain cyber secure.

What are the three things that most excite you about the IoT industry? Why?

1. The growing number of IoT devices is boosting the transformation towards a sustainable society. Smarter and better connected assets allow every aspect of energy systems to be optimized and projects to be more easily scaled, for example to enable energy trading or virtual power plants.
2. As IoT technology evolves, we are advancing from simple connectivity and monitoring of individual devices to more complex processes like semantic grouping, multi-level hierarchies and the use of IoT data in advanced analytics. With this comes greater benefits for companies, consumers and the planet.
3. IoT is enabling the transformation of business models — we are seeing the rise of customer-centric, value-driven services, increased automation and modularity. This means we can do things more quickly, at lower costs and offer more personalized experiences. This is particularly exciting in the energy industry as it gives rise to prosumers, consumers who are able to produce their own energy and become active participants in the market.

What are the three things that concern you about the IoT industry? Can you explain? What can be done to address those concerns?

1. Increased attack surface — to account for expanding grids, we must have a stronger focus on reducing the number of points at which an unauthorized user could enter the IT environment, or essentially removing potential attack vulnerabilities. This can be done by reducing software dependencies, closing ports by default and reducing publicly available resources.
2. Protecting energy data from manipulation — to avoid things like billing fraud or an unstable grid, it is important to integrate security tooling, such as code scanning, early on in product development processes. On top of this, automatic checks, high authentication standards and safe encryption technology are necessary to keep systems constantly secure.
3. Slow rates of adoption — despite the breadth of exciting IoT solutions available on the market, I am shocked by the slow uptake of this new technology. The energy industry has proven to be particularly slow to adapt. Traditional energy companies must realize that we must work together and adopt innovative solutions in order to reduce the energy industry’s greenhouse gas emissions.

Can you share with our readers a few of the exciting future applications of IoT that you have seen?

The entire concept of IoT for energy is still new, and the future applications of it are incredibly exciting. Smart meter technology is a great example of how valuable IoT applications can be in energy. By helping households or organizations analyze the areas in which energy is spent the most and identifying places where energy can be conserved, smart meters provide average savings, according to the European Commission, of $285 for electricity per metering point. But this is just the beginning. By growing these capabilities and extending the reach of IoT to all energy devices — for example, by connecting smart meters to electric cars, photovoltaic systems, batteries and inverters — the applications can grow, and so too can the benefits.

For example, intelligently shifting electrical loads enables a whole suite of new possibilities — from trading energy between households to giving consumers financial incentives to adopt sustainable behavior, i.e. charging their car when the share of renewables is high. Essentially, connecting devices via IoT opens the floodgates to an open-ended number of opportunities.

Can you help articulate to our readers a few of the ways that IoT can improve our health and improve our lives?

IoT can help us to accelerate the energy transition and thereby keep the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5ºC within reach. It is within all of our interest to mitigate the effects of climate change and only by adopting cutting-edge technology is this possible. Our IoT platform allows companies to more easily adopt renewable energy, thereby slowly but surely ensuring the sustainability of our planet.

My expertise is in product security, so I’m particularly passionate about this question. In today’s environment, hackers break into the software running IoT devices, for ransomware, to damage brands, or for other malicious purposes. Based on your experience, what should IoT manufacturing companies do to uncover vulnerabilities in the development process to safeguard their IoT products?

Companies should follow the principle of shift left, which involves applying security controls and measures early in the process. This ensures that security problems are detected early on and do not affect operations. It is also important to mirror open source software — replicating software versions and frequently validating them — to avoid the threat of malicious code, as seen with the Log4j incident late last year. Other practices such as least privilege, four-eyes principle and immutable infrastructure should also be an engrained aspect of all development processes.

What are your “5 Things You Need To Create A Highly Successful Career In The IoT Industry?

1. Develop the right experience. I was very grateful to have studied at great universities where I learnt a lot about IoT. Having this foundation is pivotal in kickstarting a career in IoT.
2. Find meaning. There are so many exciting things happening in the field of IoT and if you focus on companies doing something meaningful, in my experience you will be much more satisfied and passionate about your job.
3. Focus on the future. Look for a company that is innovative and future-oriented. IoT is constantly evolving and you can easily break new barriers.
4. Stay connected. Read news on new IoT applications, focus on networking and make use of your contacts to ensure that you stay at the forefront of the industry. I have met many mentors, investors and partners at events and it is so important to use these opportunities and stay connected.
5. Find the right people. I feel very honored to be working with my business partner David and that we have built a team of motivated experts. The people around us make sure that we not only build the most successful IoT solution, but they also make the entire process much more enjoyable and rewarding.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

I am fortunate enough to feel like I have already started a movement by developing the first comprehensive and manufacturer-independent IoT for energy solution. As I have mentioned before, the energy industry has historically been slow to innovate and providing such solutions has a huge impact across many sectors. Our company is growing rapidly and our movement is gaining momentum across Europe and the world.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

They should sign up to our newsletter https://www.gridx.ai/contact/newsletter, follow gridX on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gridx or my own personal profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andybooke/

Thank you so much for the time you spent doing this interview. This was very inspirational, and we wish you continued success.

It was my pleasure to share my vision about the IoT industry. Thank you, and have the best version of your life.

About The Interviewer: David Leichner is a veteran of the Israeli high-tech industry with significant experience in the areas of cyber and security, enterprise software and communications. At Cybellum, a leading provider of Product Security Lifecycle Management, David is responsible for creating and executing the marketing strategy and managing the global marketing team that forms the foundation for Cybellum’s product and market penetration. Prior to Cybellum, David was CMO at SQream and VP Sales and Marketing at endpoint protection vendor, Cynet. David is the Chairman of the Friends of Israel and Member of the Board of Trustees of the Jerusalem Technology College. He holds a BA in Information Systems Management and an MBA in International Business from the City University of New York.