Valovirta – a new electricity retail marketplace powered by consumption data and market forecasts launches in Finland
The Finnish retail electricity market is undergoing rapid change. While increasing profile and balance costs and changing consumer behavior challenge traditional ways of acquiring and retaining customers, it’s no longer enough for electricity retailers to optimize for volume –It’s more crucial to adjust risks with granular, customer specific pricing to meet profitability requirements along with solid growth. Valovirta helps retailers do exactly that. By analyzing multiple data sources, it enables more accurate pricing, smarter customer targeting, and more sustainable customer relationships.
It’s all about data
Valovirta.fi integrates with Fingrid’s Datahub, the national electricity data platform covering 3.9 million metering points in Finland. When a consumer grants a data authorization, the platform retrieves their actual hourly consumption data and calculates a forward-looking cost estimate using Nord Pool spot prices, Nasdaq forward curves and the user’s individual consumption profile. In addition Valovirta takes into account the user’s preferences regarding price stability and flexibility, offering contract recommendations that match their actual usage and ability to shift consumption. Based on this input, Valovirta’s algorithm recommends the electricity contract offer from the existing selection that best aligns with the user’s consumption profile and stated preferences
Retailer benefits
The marketplace is open to electricity retailers operating in Finland. Retailers cannot buy visibility or rank higher on the platform – all recommendations are data-based and neutral.
Instead, Valovirta gives retailers tools to:
- Reach customers whose profiles match their pricing strategy and price their products more accurately
- Improve customer retention
- Gain better data for pricing and product development
Participation is based on a commercial agreement, where retailers pay a fee for each contract concluded via the platform. “We’ve had discussions with nearly all electricity retailers in Finland, and the reception has been overwhelmingly positive,” says Jan Landén, CEO of EnCoHub, the company behind Valovirta. “We believe that when a customer makes a conscious, data-driven choice, they are more likely to understand the product, stay satisfied, and remain loyal for longer.” Landén adds.
Scaling the model across Europe
While Valovirta is currently available in Finland, EnCoHub aims to expand the service to other European markets in the future. One of the key challenges for internationalization is data accessibility, as many countries do not yet have centralized platforms comparable to Finland’s Datahub. However, EnCoHub is actively monitoring developments across Europe and exploring opportunities for broader deployment as data infrastructure evolves.
About EnCoHub Oy
Founded in 2023, EnCoHub Oy is a Finnish company specialized in datadriven electricity marketplaces. Its team combines deep expertise in energy systems, software development and data analytics. The company is headquartered in Jyväskylä, Finland.