Meet the Team – Chief Technology Officer – Jiří Pitron
Welcome to our “Meet the Team” series, where we provide insights into the skilled professionals driving the business forward. In this interview we introduce our Chief Technology Officer – Jiří Pitron.
Can you provide a brief overview of your background and the career path that led you to Wattstor?
I graduated as an electrical power engineer, specialising in renewable energy sources and decentralisation within energy management systems. I then went on to work for Janom as a technical manager, responsible for the portfolio of renewable energy sources, like wind, hydropower and PV power plants.
Janom focuses on business innovation and has developed a portfolio of startups across Europe focused on sustainable energy. Noticing a gap in our portfolio in terms of battery energy storage systems with EMS integration, we started looking for potential companies to invest in. We found a very interesting company in the Great British market, Wattstor. We invested as a majority shareholder for several years and as part of this process I was nominated as Chief Technology Officer. I became responsible for R&D and in-house development, where I started to develop the new stage of the hardware and software solution for our customers.
Drawing on support from the university where I studied for my PhD doctorate and Janom’s connections with IT companies, we started to develop new hardware and software capabilities towards the end of 2016. We slowly migrated away from an outsourced development model to an in-house approach.
What does the technoloy department look like today?
Now we have about 17 people in the technology team focused on software development. This includes front-end development, backend development, DevOps, machine learning, AI and embedded development, which focuses on the energy management system, Podium.
Podium manages onsite renewable energy assets like a mini power plant, connecting to DC converters, PV inverters, battery storage systems, EV chargers, AC and DC chargers, and many other appliances locally. Podium also contains a cloud-based optimisation engine, able to connect to energy markets and trade the energy generated onsite.
That’s it, really: my journey from running a small team in the beginning up to today, where we have a full roster of developers and engineers.
What are some of the key technical skills and specialities that you bring to Wattstor?
You know, as I mentioned from the beginning, I studied electrical power engineering. I knew the field and understood the technology. I also enjoyed looking at the market, conducting benchmarking, and solving technical challenges. This has meant that I bring around a decade’s experience to bear as the company is growing.
In the beginning I got involved with all the development, testing, commissioning services and so on because the team was so small. This really helps us now, as I think that if you have knowledge of these detailed parts, you are able to scale up to bigger and bigger systems.
In parallel, as the team grows, I’m here to provide leadership and input into sourcing great talent. For me, the key is to keep the technology in-house. It is important to mentor the team and foster synergies between company divisions and departments.
What are some recent challenges that you went through and you are especially proud of how you solved the problem?
Great question! Thank you for that. I honestly like challenges because they give you a new perspective and opportunity to keep learning and moving forward.
In our company, we’ve had a series of successes. In the beginning, we started with a very small portfolio of battery systems, a few hundred kilowatts.
Now we are in the megawatt hour storage systems space. We provide containerised solutions, fully integrated with Podium that monitors and communicates with many, many onsite assets. In the beginning it was a real challenge to design the hardware to be powerful and scalable enough. We can now say that we are unlimited in our ability to scale our solutions.
We’re constantly iterating and developing new products with features that can integrate with other devices. One of the most recent examples of this is a DC coupled wind turbine. This is a very fascinating technologically interesting project. We are very close to finalising this and commercialising it for our customer.
If you want to learn more about our team members, please subscribe to our YouTube channel or connect with us on LinkedIn. We are here to answer any technical questions that you might have on the topic of energy storage. Thank you.