nerou
The Team
Teamname: nerou
Members: Dennis Prausse, Andreas Wahlen, Jan Zaabe
With an average share of 20-30 percent, sewage treatment plants are usually the largest electricity consumers in the municipal sector. According to the IPCC, the wastewater sector is responsible for approximately 1.3% of global greenhouse gas emissions (Climate Watch 2022).
nerou reduces energy consumption by 10-20% with flexible and data-driven control of the systems.
Reduce operating resources with data analysis
The historical data of wastewater treatment plants hides the operating experience of the employees. This data-based operational and empirical knowledge needs to be leveraged and reused.
nerou's software analyzes this historical data from system operation and uses it to train the machine learning algorithms (self-learning algorithms). If the software detects a change in the live values, an algorithm searches for the most similar situation in the historical data.
Once this situation is found, the algorithm examines which value arose from this situation. Another algorithm developed by nerou then determines the best possible response for the current situation and gives a recommendation or a control impulse as to how the sewage treatment plant should be controlled.
The three areas of data analysis, biological and process engineering expertise and software development come together to create these decision-making aids.
How did you get together as a team?
The founding team already worked on their first joint start-up in the wastewater industry from 2018 to 2020. The experience gained in the industry formed the core of nerou GmbH.
During the first project, we realized that many wastewater treatment plants store their measurement data but do not process it further. We also discovered that a lot of expertise was available in this data, but was sitting unused on servers.
The mission of nerou is to make this data useful again and provide it to operators in their day-to-day operations.
What are you studying/working or what have you studied?
Biology and computer science.
What has Gateway ESC helped you with?
Since 2017, Gateway has accompanied and supported our basic training as entrepreneurs.