How Aalto Energia is building a modern energy offering with plug-and-play digital tools

About Aalto Energia

Aalto Energia is a new Finnish energy company focused on delivering clean and affordable energy to consumers. Their story began in the spring of 2023 when entrepreneurs Mika Vainio-Mattila and Jukka Järvinen decided to set up a new electricity sales company.

The company was founded to help reform the Finnish electricity market by giving consumers more ownership over their energy matters and delivering affordable energy contracts to improve the customer experience. Central to Aalto Energia's brand promise is to provide friendly and efficient customer service, competitive pricing, and innovative digital solutions.

Aalto Energia represents a new way of thinking and marketing energy products, as differentiation in the electricity market requires new and innovative ways in which electricity products are packaged for consumers.

The challenge  

One of the most significant challenges in the energy retail business is customer retention, as consumers are constantly bombarded with complex offers, and they bounce between providers. To address this, Aalto Energia’s focus was to develop a straightforward, easy-to-understand product offering backed by exceptional customer service to ensure clarity and trust.

However, since consumer needs go beyond just energy contracts, it was also important to complement the user experience with value-added services. This was especially important because Aalto Energia wants to retain customers beyond just price.

And, since an increasing amount of consumers nowadays have devices (electric vehicles or heat pumps) at home they want to control according to real-time electricity prices,  it was clear they had to develop a digital offering to give customers more control over energy use and raise awareness of the impact of individual energy choices on the environment.

Another motivation for them was to start building their residential flexibility portfolio to support their leveraging Synergi’s tools to develop and expand a customer base capable of shifting energy consumption to grid-optimal hours and supporting energy flexibility.

The solution 

As a new player in the energy sector with limited technical resources to build complex digital infrastructure in-house, Aalto Energia needed a partner that could match its ambition and drive. Their goal: to deliver energy optimisation tools to customers quickly and efficiently.

Synergi stepped in with the Synergi platform — a virtual power plant that unifies all household energy assets within a single app, managing every aspect of energy optimisation for consumers, including incentives. With this solution, Aalto Energia can steer and optimise hundreds of residential energy assets using Synergi’s smart technology and external API integrations.

The platform supports 400+ DER brands and models, offering fully customisable aggregation and control capabilities — all without requiring additional hardware from customers.

According to Mika Vainio-Mattila, Synergi’s “plug & play” offering and ambitious roadmap allow Aalto Energia to focus on marketing and productising its services, rather than maintaining complex API connections to home energy assets.

The results 

• 10% user adoption in 24 Hours

Within the first 24 hours of launching, around 10% of Aalto Energia’s customers had downloaded the app, showcasing that interest in these products is significant. Now, Aalto Energia’s customers with spot price contracts and energy assets like EVs and heat pumps can achieve savings of up to 50% on EV charging and 20% on heating costs.

• Development costs cut by 90%

Aalto Energia has deployed a digital product for a fraction of the cost of building this solution in-house and launching it faster. A complex application with sophisticated UI/UX and real-time features ranges from 400,000€ upwards with an average time of over 12 months to go live. With Synergi, Aalto Energia is saving  ~90% off the upfront costs of building in-house, and the launch can happen in less than a month.

Building demand response programs that work

At Synergi, we help utilities transform residential flexibility from a technical concept into a strategic advantage through a compelling user experience.

Our extensive playbook captures insights on the messages, channels, and strategies that drive adoption in demand response programs. Adoption isn’t just an operational detail — it’s the critical foundation for scaling flexibility, unlocking the full potential of connected assets, and building a clean, reliable energy system that benefits everyone.

If you’d like to explore how Synergi’s VPP can help you maximise the flexibility of your customers’ connected assets and create measurable impact, leave us your details below: