Volue: Forecasting, trading and production planning software for power markets

Overview

Volue took its name in 2020, when Arendals Fossekompani brought four Norwegian companies it owned under one brand: Powel, Markedskraft, Wattsight and Scanmatic (Wikipedia). The businesses are older than the name. The Norwegian business register shows Volue Energy Market Services AS in Arendal founded in 1992 and Volue Technology AS in Trondheim founded in 1996 (Enhetsregisteret), and the group describes itself as built on 50 years of experience (Advent International).

What sets Volue apart in energy trading software is how much of the chain one supplier covers. It sells fundamental and weather-driven price forecasts, day-ahead and intraday bidding, algorithmic intraday execution, reserve market bidding, nominations to transmission system operators, hydro and multi-asset production planning, and network software for grid companies (Volue). The hydropower heritage still shapes the product: Smart Power, the production planning suite, models hydro cascades alongside thermal, renewable and battery assets (Smart Power), and hydro producers such as Iberdrola, PPC and Repower are among its published customers.

Since late 2024 Volue has bought its way further into short-term trading. It agreed to acquire PowerBot, a Vienna algorithmic trading platform, in December 2024 (Volue) and smartPulse, a trading and battery optimisation platform founded in Türkiye in 2018, in October 2025 (Balkan Green Energy News). The company states an aim of becoming the leading SaaS provider to the global energy system by 2030.

Offering

Volue groups its products into five areas. Most are sold as software subscriptions or licences, with managed services on top for customers that want Volue to run the work.

Data and forecasts

Insight by Volue supplies power and gas market data and forecasts for Europe and Japan: short-term price forecasts at hourly and 15-minute resolution, mid-term forecasts updated daily, long-term price forecasts up to 30 years, capture prices, forward curves, production and consumption forecasts, weather and climate data, and urgent market messages (Data and forecasts). Customers read it in a web application, an Excel add-in or through an API (documentation portal).

Trading

PowerBot is a cloud-native platform for automated trading in intraday continuous, intraday auction and day-ahead markets (PowerBot). AlgoTrader is an intraday execution engine with configurable strategies for closing positions and selling asset flexibility, and its Navigator add-on turns forecasts and optimisation results into strategies without coding (AlgoTrader). The trading range also includes AuctionTrader for day-ahead and intraday auctions, AncillaryTrader (Ancitra) for reserve markets, smartPulse as a full short-term trading suite, Scheduler (formerly DeltaXE) and DispoEnergy for position management and nominations, and Market Communicator GB (Quorum) for British market messaging (Trading).

Optimisation and planning

Smart Power plans and optimises production for portfolios of hydro, thermal, renewable and battery assets across day-ahead, intraday and reserve markets, and includes the HydSim cascade simulator (Smart Power). BoFiT covers combined heat and power plants, sector coupling and industrial sites (Optimization and planning).

Asset operations

Managed services run trading and operations on a customer's behalf around the clock: PowerOps, Market Communication, Trading and Optimization, each sold as a service (Asset operations).

Distribution

For grid companies Volue sells NETBAS network information systems, Grid Planner, an ADMS, FASIT fault statistics, Elsmart and Grid Connector for connection requests, Grid Optimizer and the PowerTSM time series hub (Distribution).

Technology

Trading platforms

PowerBot is built on microservices and exposes REST and WebSocket APIs, which the company says handle thousands of requests per second, with a Python framework for writing strategies. Volue lists more than 14 supported power exchanges for it, including Nord Pool, EPEX Spot, OMIE, HUPX, SEMOpx, SEEPEX, OTE, TGE and CROPEX, and reports that it handles 77 TWh and 120 million trades a year (PowerBot). PowerBot holds independent software vendor status at EPEX Spot and Nord Pool (Volue). AlgoTrader is sold as SaaS, has REST and WebSocket APIs and a backtesting API over up to 12 months of history, logs every action for audit and supports REMIT reporting; it names EPEX Spot, Nord Pool, OMIE, GME, HUPX and BSP Slovenia (AlgoTrader).

Planning and data layer

Smart Power runs on Mesh, a data layer reached through gRPC, REST and a Python SDK. Workflows run Python and PowerShell workers and can be triggered by SCADA data arrivals or TSO nomination deadlines, and reserve nominations cover the European MARI and PICASSO platforms (Smart Power). The Mesh Python SDK is published on GitHub under the MIT licence (energy-mesh-python). Insight data comes from api.volueinsight.com through an MIT-licensed Python library (Volue Insight API Python Library).

Hosting and security

Delivery is mixed. PowerBot and AlgoTrader run in Volue's cloud, PPC's Smart Power deployment is described as SaaS (Arendals Fossekompani), and PowerTSM runs in the cloud, on premises or both (Distribution). The Scheduler page states Azure West Europe hosting, controls aligned with ISO 27001, 24/7 security operations monitoring and structured patching (Scheduler). Aligned is not certified: no ISO 27001 or SOC 2 certificate, trust centre or penetration test summary appears on the site. Only three products have public documentation (the Excel add-in, the Insight Python library and Elsmart); the rest sits behind a customer sign-in (documentation portal).

Customers

Hydro producers

Iberdrola signed a framework agreement in May 2023 to digitalise short-term production planning and optimisation, starting with its hydropower fleet of 160 plants, after a proof of concept that had begun two years earlier. Volue configures its standard software to Iberdrola's processes, including bidding and dispatch for the Iberian exchange OMIE and the transmission operators REE and REN (Energy Global).

Repower, a Swiss producer, grid operator and trader, chose three Volue products in August 2024: Auction Bidding for auction markets, Ancitra for reserve market bids to Swissgrid, and Algo Trader Power for continuous intraday trading on EPEX (Renewable Energy World).

PPC, Greece's largest power producer, agreed in September 2025 to use the Smart Power SaaS platform for short- and mid-term hydro scheduling across 3.2 GW of hydropower, including two pumped storage stations (Arendals Fossekompani).

Published customer list

The website shows E.ON, EnBW, Vattenfall, Alpiq, A2A, Uniper, Statkraft, Luminus, Engie, Enel, Iberdrola, Axpo and EDP as customers, without saying which products each uses (About Volue). Volue reported more than 2,500 customers in early 2024 (Volue).

Markets

Volue is headquartered in Oslo and describes its market as Europe and Japan (About Volue). Its owner reported activity in more than 40 countries in September 2025 (Arendals Fossekompani); at the 2020 listing the figure was 44 (Euronext).

The Nordic and Alpine hydro markets are the historic core, and the trading tools are built around European exchanges and balancing platforms: Nord Pool, EPEX Spot, OMIE, GME and the regional exchanges of Central and South-East Europe (PowerBot). Market Communicator GB serves the British market specifically (Trading). The smartPulse acquisition was bought to extend coverage into Central and Eastern Europe, Southern Europe and Türkiye (Balkan Green Energy News). Outside Europe, Insight sells fundamentals and renewable generation forecasts for Japan (Data and forecasts).

Buyers are utilities, independent power producers, traders, aggregators, hydro operators and grid companies. Beyond energy trading, Volue reported separate Power Grid and Infrastructure segments while it was listed (Volue). The website is published in English, German and Japanese.

Company

Formation and listing

The parent company, Volue AS, was registered in Oslo in November 2019 and took its current form when Arendals Fossekompani merged four of its software companies under the Volue name in 2020 (Enhetsregisteret). On 19 October 2020 its shares were admitted to Merkur Market at NOK 32 a share in a NOK 1 billion placement, half new shares and half sold by Arendals Fossekompani, which kept 77.4% (Euronext). The shares moved to the main Oslo Børs list on 4 May 2021 (Euronext). Volue bought the trading software company Likron in December 2020 (Wikipedia).

For the fourth quarter of 2023 Volue reported an annualised recurring revenue base of NOK 1,138 million, recurring revenue at 66% of the total, more than 800 employees and more than 2,500 customers (Volue).

Take-private

On 8 July 2024 Arendals Fossekompani, Advent International and Generation Investment Management offered NOK 42 a share for all of Volue, 51% above the previous trading price. Arendals Fossekompani was to cut its stake from about 60% to about 40%, with Advent holding about 43% and Generation about 17% through a jointly owned company (Arendals Fossekompani). The acquisition, through the vehicle Edison Bidco, was completed on 28 October 2024 (Advent International), and the register records the change from a public (ASA) to a private (AS) company on 18 November 2024 (Enhetsregisteret).

Since 2024

Volue added PowerBot from January 2025 (Volue) and smartPulse, with more than 80 market specialists, in October 2025 (Volue). On 12 February 2026 Arendals Fossekompani announced that TA Associates would join the owners in a transaction valuing Volue at about €1.5 billion, leaving Arendals Fossekompani with about 36%, subject to regulatory approval (Arendals Fossekompani).