Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon, everyone. Finally, we have some lovely rain here in Oslo giving us a type of green growth we're also very big fans of in Saga Pure. Hope you all had a nice Tuesday so far and that the coming hour might make it even better. Welcome to our first quarter presentation for 2022. I'm really happy that we once again can have an in-person presentation here. Special welcome to those of you who showed up here today and, of course, also welcome to those of you who are following this online. In addition to myself today, we'll have contributions from our own renewable energy expert, Jørgen Festervoll, and we'll also have a guest speech from Thomas Wikberg, the new CEO of Heimdall.
Really excited about that, and if you have some questions already, you can post them online, and we'll get back to those in the Q&A session at the end of this presentation. For those of you who are either new shareholders or perhaps even considering becoming one, this is the ultra-brief description of who we are and what we do. We are a green investment company. We're listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange. Our philosophy is simple. We seek out and invest in the solutions that contribute to a greener future. We do that using leading industry and finance expertise, and our unique network and co-location with our biggest owner gives us a generous deal flow. At the core of our strategy is exactly this combination of the industry and financial expertise.
This is both in the management as well as the board, and with the team we built up over the course of 2021, we now are very well equipped to evaluate the different opportunities that come our way, and of course, also to work actively with our investments after we have chosen to support them. We have found a really great way to work together and have lots of fun doing what we love every day. There's a slight change on this slide from previous quarter. Jan Frode Andersen, who was an investment manager in Saga, has moved on to take a position as CFO in HYON. Although we miss him very much, we are really, really happy about his new position in HYON because what's good for HYON is also good for Saga.
In terms of our investment approach, we have the freedom to invest broadly, but our main focus is on early stage. Once invested, we follow up actively, often taking board positions and also sometimes interim administrational positions in the company. The industry expertise that we have in-house give us a greater comfort at going in at an early stage, and also, of course, makes us a much more attractive investor for those companies as we certainly bring more than just capital to the table. Our early-stage focus is one of the reasons that we have many private investors as shareholders in Saga.
Through Saga, they get access to investments they otherwise wouldn't have access to, and I think, this is also one of the reasons why Saga Pure is interesting for institutional investors as they might not have the internal industry capacity or, company-specific research to make those investments comfortably. We have a flexible ticket size and a very broad international network that we're using actively, and we also have regular contact with other investors and funds where we are discussing, possible joint investments together. This is what we're looking for, primarily technologies, not asset plays. We, of course, look for the future unicorns out there. They have to have a significant impact environmentally and also growth potential on a global scale for the company to be interesting for us. We also look for gaps in the value chain.
Gold is sometimes buried where the attention is the least. The technologies we invest in, they should have a relevance of preferably in a 100-year perspective, and we also sometimes see that some of the investments can have a strategic match with what we already have, and that's of course a bonus. Q1 in three words, not too bad. The main number here, of course, is the net profits from operations, roughly NOK 53 million , and there were three primary contributions to this number. One of them is related to HYON, where we did a capital raise in January, just before the listing of the company in February.
This led to an unrealized profit of NOK 23 million for us, and in terms of our dilution in the company after the capital raise, that also meant that the company is now being treated as a regular investment and not as an associate company like BCS. BCS is the number two contribution to this number. In Bergen Carbon Solutions, there was also an equity raise early this year, and in that equity raise we participated but let ourselves dilute by 1.5%, and that had a positive P&L effect of about NOK 25 million if we also take into account our share of the result in BCS.
We also had a net positive effect from Horisont Energi of about NOK 19 million. Then, if you take out the operational costs, you end up at NOK 53 million. The return on equity so far this year is 5%. We are quite content with that considering how the markets out there are. But we'll of course continue to work to create more value for our shareholders going forward. At the end of the quarter, after paying out NOK 0.1 per share in dividends in February, our cash balance was a solid NOK 680 million. As mentioned, we still have to treat BCS as an associate company, and that means that it's only half the truth that you can see in the reported numbers.
As you can see here, or if you looked into the numbers, you can see that the book value, the associate accounted value, has risen, because the company raised a significant amount of capital, but that there's still quite a difference from the reported value and the market value, and that's around NOK 362 million today. Q1 was an exciting quarter for all of our portfolio companies. I mentioned some of these highlights already. We had a NOK 250 million raise in Bergen Carbon Solutions in conjunction with the announcement of the establishment of a full-scale carbon nanofiber production plant in Mosjøen, Norway. We participated with NOK 25 million in that.
In Horisont Energi, the big announcement was, of course, E.ON's strategic entry into the company in a NOK 371 million directed capital issue. We also increased our stake in that company. HYON also mentioned a successful placement of NOK 50 million in conjunction with the listing in February, and of course, also the dividend. Let's move on to some highlights from the portfolio companies, starting off with Horisont Energi. Horisont Energi, as I mentioned in previous presentations also, that they are developing blue and green ammonia projects. They have a really big one up in the north of Norway. That's a blue ammonia project, and they're making good progress on that. In addition to these ammonia projects, they also develop carbon logistics and storage solutions or CO2 solutions.
That's also one of the reasons why E.ON got really excited about what they are doing. The entry of E.ON into this company also confirmed what we saw in this company before we invested. After their entry, there was also some changes to the board and our own ammonia expert, Rob Stevens, he was upgraded to chairman of the board, and we also had a representative from E.ON joining the board. It's a really strong team, both in the management and the board there now, and we're very excited about their prospects going forward, and they keep making good milestones. One of them was getting the carbon storage license in the Barents Sea, which of course, is key to realize the blue ammonia project up there.
As mentioned last time, they had a grant from Enova in Norway of NOK 500 million . If we have that, plus the fresh capital from E.ON and other shareholders, they're extremely robust now for executing on their plans. Bergen Carbon Solutions have developed a technology which converts CO2 to highly valuable carbon nanofibers at a fraction of the energy cost and with zero emissions if you compare it to the conventional way of producing carbon nanofibers today. It's a really exciting technology. They're making good progress in their projects on the technology side, on the customer side, and over the course of fall and winter, they've had numerous companies test the carbon nanofibers as an additive to lithium-ion-based batteries in the anode of those batteries.
It increases the properties of the battery, and they have some really good results coming back. If this is implemented at scale, this is a potential game changer for Bergen Carbon Solutions. The company has also scaled up the production units from prototype to a commercial scale, preparing them for the big facility that is now planned for Mosjøen, Norway, where the capacity will be 160 tons per year. In March, they also announced an LOI with Inabata, which is a really big Japanese company with production in many different areas, and they are now seriously considering using the carbon nanofibers to improve the properties of many of their products. Recently, the company also announced that the CEO of Bergen Carbon Solutions, Jan Børge Sagmo, is resigning due to health reasons.
While instrumental for taking the company from the initial thesis to where it is today, he also built a really strong organization. The founder, co-founder with him is still in the company, and with that in place, we are still quite optimistic about the prospects of Bergen Carbon Solutions. We have Heimdall Power. They've developed a technology which represents a revolution for the electrical grids, enabling real-time insight into what's happening in the grid, which is extremely helpful for operators, and it can potentially increase the flow of power through the grids significantly. With the electrical grid being mankind's biggest machine, the massive untapped potential that this company can unlock leaves us very, very excited. I'll leave it to the CEO to give you more information on what's happening in Heimdall Power later. We have IC Technology.
They're developing technology platform which addresses one of the biggest challenges with storing and transporting liquid hydrogen. They have a technology which almost eliminates boil-off. That's one of the biggest challenge when you're transporting hydrogen, and they're developing now a fuel tank that will be the start of this venture, but they are also designing concepts for land tanks and also carrier tanks. They've built the organization, have a CEO, CTO, and they've gotten people in both sales, marketing, and engineering in place, and they also started the process on building the first tank prototype. We're heading out there in June together with a board to check out this new tank. For our next quarterly update in August, I hope to show you a sneak peek on how that looks like.
We have HYON, and over the course of last fall, we spent considerable amount of time restructuring the company, working with all aspects of what they're doing and how they can succeed. This company, they're developing bunkering solutions or fueling solutions for the maritime sector to enable zero emissions. They're starting out with compressed hydrogen, but depending on where the market goes, will also develop solutions for other energy carriers. The obvious big highlight for HYON I already mentioned, the capital raise and the listing. Over the quarter, they have also gotten several skilled new employees in place, including Jan Frode Andersen. Recently, we also strengthened the board in the company with Otto Søberg and Silje Smedal, in addition to myself and Jens Berge from Norwegian Hydrogen. They have lots of incoming requests from the different players out there.
This is obviously a gap that we are going to fill. They also made good progress on the first refueling station concept. With all the good stuff that has happened for HYON lately, they're in a very, very good position to execute on their strategy. Since what we're doing in Saga is truly a team effort, it makes sense for you to get to know our team better. Last time, we covered ammonia. This time, we're going to discuss a sector which due to everything it includes, can seem quite overwhelming. To avoid just that, we have with us here today our own industry expert on renewables, Jørgen Festervoll, whom I for many years thought was an engineer, which is obviously the biggest compliment an engineer can give another person. Let's just move right in in there, Jørgen.
Great turn.
All right.
All right.
You're not an engineer, but.
That's right.
You have done.
Surprise
... a lot of other things. Please tell us a little bit about yourself, who you are, and your background?
Absolutely. I'm 43 years old from Asker outside of Oslo, where I currently live. I've lived a couple of years in the U.S. and a year in Singapore. I like to travel whenever I get the chance, and I play the piano and I sing, so music is a big passion for me outside of work. After high school, I took a master's degree in business administration from the Norwegian School of Economics in Bergen.
Well done.
Not engineering, but after I graduated, I've spent most of my career in the energy sector. I guess the reason why I ended up there is that my father also spent his whole career within the energy sector, so I got kilowatt hours and gigajoules under my skin from a very early age.
That must have been why. Of course, we've had lots of discussions many years prior to you joining Saga, and those were at quite a technical level.
Yes, exactly. I've learned a lot, and I'll get back to that. I suppose that another thing that I really love about energy is that it touches all parts of society. I mean, everything from households to business and industry and transportation. If you work with energy, you're really working with all parts of society and the economy, and that really fascinates me. Also being able to contribute to creating a sustainable energy system has become a real big passion for me through the years. During my career, I've been lucky to work in the whole energy value chain, from production to distribution and storage, to regulatory aspects and markets, as well as end user applications.
I feel grateful that I get to use the experience I built over the past 20 years at Saga every single day.
You haven't just worked with the energy industry as such.
No, that's right. A couple of years prior to joining the Saga team, I worked for a Swedish software as a service company. That really taught me a lot about how to scale business, how to build global sales and marketing teams, and I also got a front row seat in one of the most popular business models today, the software as a service industry. I've really been able to use this experience when screening software companies for Saga and also working with our digital portfolio companies such as Heimdall Power.
Your responsibility in Saga is renewable energy, and as I mentioned, it's quite a broad term with many different meanings to many different people. How do you make sense of it, and kind of chop it up?
Well, I guess the first thing people think about when you say renewables is the usual suspects such as wind and solar and perhaps hydropower. However, in Saga and in my role as VP Renewable Opportunities, we define it much broader. At Saga, renewables covers the whole value chain, and we divide it into four parts. First is renewable production technology, so technology related to solar and wind and the other renewable sources. The second is the distribution, so any technology such as Heimdall Power that help the power grid. The third is energy storage such as batteries, and the fourth is end user applications such as solutions for energy efficiency or home charging solutions for electric vehicles.
Last but not least, the fifth is the digital space within this whole value chain. That could be software that enables combining thousands of rooftop solar installations and batteries into what is known as a virtual power plant.
That's a lot.
Yes.
Which-
Yes, exactly.
Which areas of renewable energy do you find most fascinating? I mean, do you have a favorite?
Well, first of all, I mean, I've been working with energy my whole career, so the fact that we now for the first time we know that we can supply the whole world with affordable renewables is super exciting, and the fact that I get to work on this transition every day at Saga is, you know, both inspiring and feels meaningful. Secondly, I'll take another aspect. It's a little bit more academic, but what I find really fascinating is that in order to really understand the renewable energy space, you need a multidisciplinary approach. I mean, you need to combine competence such as engineering and economics and finance and policy and regulation. I mean, look at wind power, right? You have to understand the technical aspects of wind power, such as variability and capacity factors.
You have to translate and understand what does that mean for the economics, and how do you make it bankable through structures such as a power purchase agreement? You have the whole regulatory and political aspects of this, which is perhaps the most challenging part of it. It you really have to understand and use a wide array of fields to really understand it. Through the years, I've been able to work with and learn from some of the best experts within engineering, spin doctors and legal minds. I've also been able to build my competence within engineering policy and regulations. I really have a passion for this complexity, and that's one of the reasons why I love working with the renewable energy markets.
Some would say that renewable energy has undergone a revolution over the last two decades. Can you sum it up, those 20 years in just one minute?
In one minute? Well, of course. I mean, I've had a front row seat to this transition the past 20 years. For starters, renewables have seen an, you know, an exponential growth, the past 20 years. In 2006, the world produced about 18,000 terawatt-hours of electricity, and wind and solar only made up, I mean, less than 1%. In 2020, the world produced more than 26,000 terawatt-hours of electricity, and now wind and solar made up almost 10%, and that is a huge accomplishment. I mean, but I think that the most important change is the unprecedented reduction in cost of the price or the cost of renewable electricity, also known as the LCOE, or the levelized cost of electricity. I mean, when I started in the energy sector in 2004, wind and solar were so expensive.
I mean, they weren't even considered a solution on any large scale. Today, solar and onshore wind are the cheapest forms of electricity in nations accounting for 90% of all global electricity generation. Maybe even more impressive, new renewables such as solar and onshore wind are actually cheaper than existing coal and gas fired power plants in countries representing more than 50% of the total global energy production.
It's funny you say that because at the start of the solar, you know, revolution, it was just the Norwegians who could afford it.
Exactly.
True
... that's-
Norway had the highest amount of installed solutions out there, and this was Norwegian cabin owners wanting to have electricity to charge their cell phones and stuff like that.
It was actually, you know, we had a lead, but that was soon over, caught by the rest of the world.
Exactly. I have to say I never thought that prices would fall so fast and so much. Then again, nobody did. It was only the rich Norwegian that could afford it, right? When you now compare the cost of renewable energy with the current power prices in Europe, which are at an all-time high of over EUR 200 per MWh, I mean, all renewable power production is cheaper. Although the high electricity prices we're currently facing is a challenge for our wallets, it sure will help move the transition towards renewable energy.
All of that is kind of easy to understand, right? You know, you build more, it gets cheaper, you mass produce and all that. What areas of this transition do you think are the least understood?
I think I'd say the need for investment into the power grid. Let me give you two figures for that, NOK 32 trillion, NOK 24 trillion, right?
What does that get you?
Yeah. I'll
If you buy something with that.
I'll get back to that. I mean, let's just look at the $32 trillion. What is that? That is the total amount of investment that is needed in all new electricity generation and storage towards 2050 in what Bloomberg calls their green scenario, and that takes us to net zero, which of course is important. Exactly, what is $32 trillion? That's a huge number. Well, it's about 23 times the oil fund, and it will buy you about 12 Apples, and I'm not talking about apples, I'm talking about the company of course. You know, we have the $32 trillion. The second number, the $24 trillion, that is the amount that needs to be invested in the power grid for the same period and the same scenario.
In other words, we have to spend almost as much money on the power grid as for all new generation and storage capacity, and I think that fact is not very well understood outside the energy community.
We'd obviously get our hands on the companies that get their hands on those trillion.
Exactly. Exactly.
I mean, you say this is not a very well-understood part of the transition and why do you think it's not so well understood?
Well, Bjørn, how often do you discuss the power grid with your friends? I mean
Quite often actually.
I mean, few people are really interested in the power grid, right? As long as the lights are on, we don't really care. Secondly, there are some aspects of the power grid that are quite complex. I mean, few people really understand the difference between kilowatt hours and kilowatts, you know, capacity limits, power flows, regulation, and tariffs. We see this at Saga all the time. I mean, I don't know how many green hydrogen and clean fuel projects that we've screened where when we meet them, many of them have no clue of the available capacity at the sites where they're supposed to build, and they don't know how much time it will take to build it. I mean, at one location I think we had different projects that combined would, you know, account for maybe 1,500 MW-2,000 MW.
The only problem is the only available capacity is about 30 MW, you know? Understanding these aspects of the energy system is vital before you invest.
It's good for us that not that many others are having their eyes on that. But in terms of that, I mean, what opportunities does that represent for us?
Well, I think Saga's strength is that we have the strategy of combining, you know, industry and financial expertise, and having industry experts that actually, you know, really know the power grid and know the power markets, and can use that when investing. I'll give you another example. I think many people who have read the paper have seen that we are currently facing a very big difference in power prices between the north and the south of Norway due to grid congestions, right? This makes investing in new power-intensive industry in the north super attractive, such as hydrogen.
The challenge if you don't understand the market dynamics and the capacity limits, you might end up investing in so much capacity that you reach the threshold where prices actually go up to or even above the south, and you lose your competitive advantage. I think the fact that we understand these dynamics and also know how to mitigate that risk gives Saga a competitive advantage.
Shortly after you joined Saga, we invested in Heimdall Power. We will of course hear more from them later today, but it will also be interesting to hear from you. I mean, what potential do you see in the company today, and what do you think the company can evolve into as we look forward?
Well, let me start by saying just a few words, for those of you who don't know Heimdall, about what it provides. Heimdall provides real-time insight into the available capacity and the health of the power grid using a combination of software, sensors, and AI. Heimdall really caught my interest, for several reasons. First of all, I've worked with grid companies, I've worked with grid regulation and tariffs, and, you know, I've seen what the two biggest problems are. First of all, it's super expensive to build new capacity, right? It's a cost issue. The second is it takes a lot of time, I mean, sometimes up to 10 years to build new capacity. Obviously any new technology such as Heimdall's that can help grid companies make the most of their existing assets will be valuable.
Not only for the grid companies, but perhaps even more so for power producers and power-intensive industry who otherwise would not be able to connect new capacity for years. I think that's really important. Secondly, I knew that of the trillions of dollars that are gonna be spent in the power grid towards 2050, close to 40% will be used on smart grids and digitization, which is exactly the space where Heimdall is at. Obviously Heimdall has the potential to become one of the unicorns, and thus a very lucrative investment for Saga. The only challenge we really saw in Heimdall before Saga invested was the fact that Heimdall is going to market with very conservative companies, and most, if not all, of the procurements are made through public tenders.
We expected the sales to be pretty slow in the beginning, and that's what we've been observing. However, and luckily, traction is really building up, and we're seeing a lot of more tenders and business opportunities. That's that. And on this, on your question on how it can evolve, I mean, today, Heimdall has chosen the high voltage lines and is looking at capacity and health there. In the future, I imagine Heimdall covering the whole grid and the whole power value chain, supplying important insight, not only to grid companies, but to power producers, to power intensive industry, to traders, to aggregators, to regulators. In other words, Heimdall will be the go-to platform for, you know, all market participants. In other words, I'm pretty bullish on the Heimdall case.
Any renewable fun facts you'd like to share as we round off?
Well, I have a really positive fact. The fact that in, you know, last year, we spent $755 billion on the energy transition, and that is a doubling of 2015. That's a pretty optimistic fact. Not impressed? Okay. Not that fun. Okay. I'll try another. Let me give you another, more fun. GE just came out with a huge 14 MW offshore windmill, and one rotation of that windmill will give you power to one U.K. household for two days. That's pretty cool.
I'm still not laughing, but it's quite impressive.
It is impressive.
Thanks a lot, Jørgen.
Thank you.
We'll move on with our presentation. Son of Nine Mothers, Heaps of Superpowers, and the guardian of the Rainbow Bridge, which connects heaven and earth? No, I haven't mixed up my speaking notes with the script for the next Avengers movie. It's the CV of the Viking god that the company we'll hear about took its name from. Although the CV of the coming speaker is slightly different from the one I just said, it's still quite impressive. We are very, very excited to have with us here today the new CEO of Heimdall Power, Thomas Wikberg. He will explain how they're taking the electric grids into the digital age and also go through some of the exciting developments we'd had over the last year. With that, Thomas, the floor is yours.
Thank you, Bjørn, and thank you for inviting Heimdall Power to present for Saga's shareholders today. My name is Thomas Wikberg, and I'm the CEO as of April in Heimdall Power, and I'm really looking forward to talk a little bit more about the company to you today. Heimdall Power was founded in 2016, and with the vision of digitizing the power grid through a combination of software applications, sensor technology, and the utilization of artificial intelligence or AI. Currently, we are 37 full-time employees with a focus on sales, software development, and of course, also on sensor research and technology development. We have moved recently into our new headquarters in downtown Oslo, out of the space in the StartupLab. We have now installations in 9 European countries.
I'm happy to explain to you here that we are actually getting a lot of traction also globally, with several good customer dialogues recently now in the U.S., but even so also in countries like India are knocking on the door. As you can see on the bottom here, our strong capital base with some really good active owners, and I think we have seen some very good enthusiastic presentations today. What that means with good venture capital players in place, but also with utility space players that are on the board and as investors. That gives us a lot of, I would say, strong building blocks for the future. Now, let me present a little bit of the development for the last 12 months since actually Saga came in approximately a year ago.
We have seen a rise of more than 40% of our employees from 26 to 37, and that also implies that we have had first success. I would say also in, you know, how we are available in the market already, from three countries a year ago now into nine countries. We have tripled our sales organization from three to nine people with professional sales, I would say, and that results immediately also into that we have, as I mentioned already, customers' interest in the U.S., and we are present at the important U.S. industry conferences being visible on the floor or in the market, in the American market.
We have sold more than 90% of the Neurons, these are the sensors, up to 88 of those units. I'm glad also to tell and will show you a little bit later that these Neurons also can be installed within drone, and we have already had two successful cases now on a test basis exemplifying this. Lastly, we have more than 100% growth, of course, than in the customer base from eight to 17 paying customers. All of this is not coming on its own. It's also coming that we actually do have a credibility in the market with starting off with certification of important ISO management system. The quality system, the management system, and the information system with cybersecurity are all in place or are about to be implemented. Very important cornerstones when we are meeting tenders.
Let's take a step back and have a look at exactly what Heimdall Power actually is doing. First and foremost, like we heard from Jørgen, we are a software as a service company, but we are creating an uniqueness, and with that also a stickiness by combining the software with our own developed sensors called Neurons. That's what you see here on the picture that is hanging on the power line. These Neurons are the size of a basketball, and they're mounted directly on the high voltage power lines in a matter of just some minutes. It's very easy to install them, and they are actually powered directly from the line itself. That gives a lot of advantage.
The sensors that are in the Neurons, they are then measuring all the critical parameters of the power line. These data, we are sending them wirelessly then to the cloud. In the cloud, we are combining these data with a lot of third-party data sources, contextualizing this data, and utilizing this data into our software applications. That creates a lot of valuable, I would say, data insights that our customers can get access to and utilize. No one else, I would say today, has this type of data. By combining the software, the unique sensor data that comes from this Neuron, combining it with third-party data and with machine learning processes, we are providing the grid companies with real-time data, and that is very important.
It's real time and not something that comes an hour or a day or a week later. Real time about the health condition and about the available capacity that is in the grid. In its simplest form, Heimdall helps actually the grid companies to get more out of their existing assets as of today. Our major features, services, or modules are shown here. It's from the left to the right, an increase in line capacity through the management of data and forecasting it also. Prediction of snow and ice building on the grid. Location identification of short circuits or even broken lines. We can diagnose predictive maintenance, planning, so we can build a lot of models into that and make maintenance more effective.
Lastly, we are providing a lot of insights in our reports that the investment department or the planning department are using for their future plans on building the grid. What we like to say is that, you know, we are providing our customers with a maximum power, max control, and a max uptime, but with a minimum of investment that are required for this. The green system today, it faces a lot of challenges that actually cannot be solved very easily with traditional solutions. These three main challenges that we are showing here is, you know, first of all of the renewable energy production, and secondly, also the electrification of the consumption that creates a range of challenges for the grid.
The need to understand the real-time available capacity in the grid, that becomes more and more vital as we move into the green shift. In addition, also climate change, the third one on the bottom left, that leads also to an increased number of extreme weather events today. That even more drives, you know, the need for knowing about the health and the condition of your grid. That becomes very important for our customers. Grid companies have so far, you know, tried to solve these challenges by building new lines. This is what you see in the middle here. This is, you know, I would say the traditional old way, investing your way out of the problem. This is not sustainable. It is very expensive in the long run.
What we believe is that using digital solutions like Heimdall is providing that you see on the, on the right, that is how the grid companies will actually improve. That is giving them much more smarter, flexible, and cheaper way of answering these questions. This is all about grid-enhancing technologies. It's again, like I said, sensors have available these IoT data or OT data, capture those data in real-time, make it available in a cloud, capture that together with third-party data, and then you have applications that you can process the data and make valuable insights out of this, into a real-time data or for the forecasting or further planning.
The best of all is that it's not only technology, but it's also about regulatory trends driving the growth. As we already heard, grid companies are monopolies, so hence they are heavily regulated. Historically, the regulators have favored a lot of capital investments, and traditional solutions to grid companies has been to invest in more assets. Again, we don't believe that this is not sustainable in the long run. The current regulatory trend in the European Union and in the U.S. is actually that increasingly having a focus on digital solutions and getting the most out of the existing infrastructure, not the future, but the existing infrastructure. I'm glad to mention that in December last year, the U.S. regulator FERC adopted actually finally a ruling that requires real-time capacity monitoring in the U.S. for the grid companies.
This type of favorable regulation is really driving growth in the market that Heimdall is in and for the new grid enhancing technology. I think we heard a lot about the immense opportunity that is there in the market of a trillion-dollar market that Jørgen mentioned, and I just want to emphasize this again. This is documented well by Bloomberg's green transition scenario, which will bring us, you know, down to a net zero in 2050. We will need to invest, and I'm, you know, just saying this again what Jørgen said, $24 trillion in the power grid alone between 2020 and 2050. 40% of that alone will be related to digital solutions that Heimdall actually is part of. Heimdall is addressing a trillion-dollar market we believe worth between $8 trillion and $10 trillion.
In comparison that you can see here on the right, the expected investment in all new power generation and storage capacity is $32 trillion. In other words, we will have to spend almost as much in upgrading the power grid that you see on the left, as we do in combining all the new energy production and storage. I think that's something that not many people are aware of, that there's a huge gap in upgrading the infrastructure. Let's have a look at, you know, what are the benefits that we are providing to whom, and what are the market participants? Jørgen mentioned that already. Today, our main customers are, of course, the grid companies. Ultimately, they have the usage of knowing the capacity.
We are imagining a future where information regarding real-time available capacity will also be offered to other players, like for example, the power producers. They will like to know what is the capacity in feeding into the existing grid. Also, to large consumers on the very right, they will like to know what is the quality and the capacity that I can get out of the electricity grid to serve my factory, and all the players in between, the aggregators, the energy traders, and of course, the regulators. We are envisioning to make Heimdall's platform relevant for a number of market participants in the future.
As the energy system will increase in complexity, and we know that for sure, all of these segments will demand more transparency about the grid capacity, and Heimdall will be very well positioned to actually provide this type of information. How does this look like in terms of a value creation in a use case that we are showing on this slide? A typical case for us arises when connecting the renewable energy production coming with new electricity load to an existing and maybe an older grid with limited capacity. This is exactly what's the case that we have here, is the case that came with Arva in the north of Norway, and they were facing this issue.
The grid operator was actually having a big challenge that a wind park was about to be constructed, and the grid at the point of connection was aging and not dimensioned for the type of load that the wind park would produce. The traditional solution, what is that? Well, of course, commission and build a new, entirely new grid. The estimated cost that you can see in the middle here was up to EUR 20 million, and it would take several years actually to finish this, with the consequences to postpone the whole wind park project. With our technology from Heimdall, we were able to discover that there is excess capacity in the grid.
By removing that barrier, there was no need to invest in a new line, just by simply installing 15 of our Neurons, our sensors, at a fraction of a cost. Simply by knowing what the real capacity actually is in the infrastructure, our customers are able to postpone huge investments and further to give renewable energy producers an immediate grid connectivity that is very often not the case. That is exactly what we enable, and we call Heimdall the power of knowing. This story here is not exceptional. Actually, we see this being played out over and over again on the global scale every day.
Let's look a little bit about the platform that we are developing and on grid monitoring and how we think that this will evolve over the next years. It all started off in 2020 with the launch of our first commercial product, consisting of, you know, an easy software application, the sensor platform that we built, and real-time monitoring, mostly on single lines. That was the focus. Already the year after, in 2021, we started to work with more of a system-wide approach, extending the scope from just not only single lines, but more to a grid scale approach. This is something our customers see a tremendous potential in, especially when they have experienced the first technology usage and how these software insights can be utilized in their own operations.
By combining sensor data with also weather data and of course with our machine learning methods, we do have a service that we can expand to take, you know, from a single line to a whole network. In 2022, in this year, we are starting to work in enabling our device to work more as, and we call it an IoT communication infrastructure. Now, what does that mean? We see that the development in the grid management is developing more and more to collecting more data sources from the grid. We are planning to allow these devices that are being utilized to collect the data to communicate via our platform or our hardware, including then even third party sensors.
This will solve, we believe, a huge pain point for our vendors or our grid companies and our customers, but also for third-party vendors who are looking to deploy low-powered sensors on the grid. We will see that more and more there is a competition out there with more sensors to be deployed. Since our device is powered directly from the line, and this is something that we are, I think, unique on, we have the power and the, I think the shelf life needed to actually pass on the information from other sensors into our device and pass it on to the cloud. This is something that we will see more and more, that we're gonna build an ecosystem of how to collect data from the grid out there.
Lastly, what we envision for 2023 and beyond? Well, our goal there is to become actually the leading platform for all power grids monitoring and optimizing services. We are planning to expand the scope of our product portfolio to include more and other grid components, and also to have new services like, for example, topology optimization and grid planning to become additional services than what we are delivering today. Let me stop up here a little bit and share with you what we believe is a world-first achievement. Just a few weeks ago, we actually had a massive breakthrough when Heimdall's engineers performed the world-first autonomous drone installation on a live power line outside of Oslo. We believe that this is a major technological achievement.
For our customers and partners, it will make installing these sensors or our Neurons device more simple and more cost effective, especially on difficult and cumbersome access points in the nature. We are looking forward to do our first commercial installations using the drone and autonomous drone in the second half of this year already. Now, let's get back again to our customers and how they are moving to, we call it more acceptance tests or pilots, if you want to call it, of single lines and monitoring those into more a system-wide and large scale approach. It is no secret, and we heard that already earlier today, that selling new technology to grid companies being monopolists can be a slow process.
We see that in the past six months that we have seen significant traction actually in each of these stages of commercialization that you see here on this slide. The number of qualified leads that you see on the left lower corner here has increased significantly. For we had only 10 qualified leads two years ago. In the beginning of this year, we had more than 200 qualified leads. Currently, we have, as I already explained, 17 paying customers across nine countries, and so far, zero churn on this. We have seen a very positive trend in the market that the market is maturing. We see that our customers are moving away from just only single line monitoring, but more to wanting to have a grid or a system-wide monitoring.
After accepting the technology, recognizing that the software is working for them and that it can be incorporated into the operations, they are moving more and more inviting the projects to more long-term SaaS contracts and subscribing to our software services. This is also underscored by the last graph that you can see on the right lower side in the amount of public tenders that we see. As you know, all big projects, they need to go through the public procurement process, and we need to be part of this. Two years ago, we had only four tenders. Last year, we had six tenders. Only in the first quarter of this year, we already processed five tenders, which we see as a major opportunity.
The market is really accelerating, we believe. Moving forward, we all expect that our customers will actually expand the scope of how to utilize the technology. We see a huge potential in new services coming out from the grid monitoring and optimization services. We are actively working with some of the most, I would say, innovative and forward-leaning grid companies, but also with important research institutions in this field that develop these kind of services, and that gives us a lot of advantages. Lastly, over the course of the past year, we have built a strong organization in Heimdall, now counting almost 40 colleagues. I think we have a world-class management team with experiences from within the power and the grid industry, but also from a lot of other technology companies.
They are overlooking today a solid value chain that we have built up and constantly improving on from sales and marketing, from delivery and operations, from the supply chain and production and software development, and of course, continually evolving on the sensor research and development. All of this having a solid quality management system around it with the needed certification that is needed for the tenders, very important. I would say not slowly, but more and more aggressively, we are looking into strategic opportunities. We have a strong business development competency also in the organization, looking at opportunities that are coming our way. With that, the most of all on this presentation I want you to remember is that the power of knowing, that is what Heimdall is delivering and promising to our customers.
We are delivering this with the Max Power, the Max Uptime, and the Max Control, but with the minimum of the cost. Thank you for your attention, and I'm happy to take questions.
Can I have one? When entering into tenders, what has been your historical hit ratio, and who has been your competitors?
Yes. That, I would say we have. The hit rate is still early to say because there hasn't been any, you know, big tenders that have been moving on so far. The competitors are. There's a lot of competitors out there, but not having the uniqueness of, I would say, the sensors that we are having that are self-sufficient. They have the way of how they are being powered. I think the competition is more like very specific on specific services, while we can provide a more holistic services, as such.
The tenders are, you know, we are in dialogue now with the latest five tenders, and we are getting a lot of good questions from them, and we are still in the process of answering and being part of these tenders.
What is the timeframe in these tenders?
Yeah. That's something we would like to have a more precise answer to. They can take, you know, I would say even a year can be a span of them. If they are short and quick, six months maybe. I would say anything from six months to 12 months. We see a lot, and this is our strategy that we are following today, is what we call the land grabbing is all about getting in the door with acceptance testing, be part of the management in these grid companies to test our technology, and then be part of, I would say, you know, developing the tender, because these tenders are complex and having a lot of questions.
We would like, you know, to make our potential customers here to be more comfortable with that, with this new technology. It's a strategy about getting in the door early stage before the tender is even being sent off.
Good. Thank you very much, Thomas. There will be more opportunities in the final Q&A sessions to ask other questions. Just a brief summary and outlook as we reach the end of this presentation. 2022 started out with a downward tumble for the green shares out there. That was abruptly stopped by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which basically supercharged Europe's efforts to gain energy independence and then accelerating all projects within the renewable space. We therefore have good reasons to believe that Europe might actually reach and perhaps even surpass the targets that have been set out earlier.
Despite this, enthusiastic approach around renewables, we have also seen that the capital markets are much more conservative and tougher for the hopeful green tech companies out there. Us as well are still keeping a very conservative investment approach. We still, however, are evaluating investment opportunities. Quite a few of them have actually come to our table this year also, although the noise out there has been quite different.
Our main focus in 2022, however, will be working closely with our portfolio companies, such as Heimdall Power, doing what we can to help them succeed in their business plan. Obviously with people at the core of any success, as we also saw here in Heimdall, we will continue to develop both our own organization as well as the organizations in the companies we have invested in, helping us on our mission of pure growth. With that, we'll move on to the Q&A session where you can ask questions to myself, to Jørgen, and of course also to Thomas Wikberg. It will be hosted by our CFO, Espen Lundaas. We'll start off with if there's any other questions from the audience here. No?
Do we have some questions from the web that we can take?
Yes, we do have some questions here. We can start with a few questions to you, Bjørn, regarding. The first one is related to BCS. After the CEO left the company, does that have any effect for the company going forward? Do you have any update on the replacement to get a new CEO on a permanent basis?
Yeah. I mean, obviously, the CEO of the company, Jan Børge Sagmo, was essential in the company's development from the master's thesis he wrote together with Finn Blydt-Svendsen, who has also been in the company since it was founded. That said, there's a strong organization in place there now, a good management team with good traction on the various projects, both technology-wise, commercially-wise. As soon as we got the notification, we started the process of hiring a new CEO. So that is well underway, and I'm confident that we will find a person that can lead the company further. Our view of the company and its prospects has not been changed at all.
Thank you. Also a question for you, Bjørn. You have mentioned earlier that the value expectation from the potential investments have been too high in the past. Are the expectation lowered, thus getting more aligned with Saga nowadays? Should we expect the large net cash to be utilized shortly?
Well, value expectations, that's always an interesting thing, and you find that everywhere. Of course, if you go to the stock exchange, it's quite simple. There, it's the price is set at any time by the market itself. What we have seen is this also a slight repricing of the unlisted companies, although there is some lag there between what's happening in the markets as such and also the realization, the reality check that we see needs to happen in that space. That is now happening, and we see some opportunities that we might execute on.
There's a number of boxes that needs to be ticked before we invest, and we'd rather sit a little bit longer on our cash instead of investing in the wrong company. We do a really stringent due diligence on everything we invest in. Once invested, as you have seen over the year and a half since our inception, we are very, very actively engaged in the companies and in many instances also increase our position.
Thank you. We have a last question to Thomas and Heimdall. Are there any plans of listing the stocks?
Well, yes and no, I can say. We are well capitalized today as we speak, and there are no immediate plans for private placement or an IPO. But however, having said that, the board, of course, is constantly evaluating the best options that are there and for the company, and there's also a close dialogue, I think, with the management team. No, there's not an immediate plan for listing today.
Thank you. I think that's it from the audience online at least. Yeah.
Okay. If there is not any other questions from the audience here today, I think we'll just round off. Thank people have come here today, those who have followed online, and see you in August. Thank you.
Thank you.