Our story
Lisbon, 2023: solving a focused dispatch problem
The dispatch challenge for distributed solar and battery operators across European markets was clear. Rui Bento founded Pollen to address it, bringing a focused dispatch layer to distributed fleets.
Why Pollen exists
Intraday prices were visible, but execution lagged. Operators with 20 or 30 sites across the Iberian Peninsula watched MIBEL prices while following fixed schedules from the prior day. The 15-minute settlement window left little time to react across multiple assets. The arbitrage was there, yet much of it went uncaptured.
Rui Bento, Sofia Andrade, and Lucas Ferreira founded Pollen in Lisbon in 2023. The brief was specific: assess each site at every settlement period instead of applying one fleet rule that smooths away asset differences. The pilot launched in 2025 with an operator fleet.
Pollen is bootstrapped and based in Lisbon. Its scope is the Iberian Peninsula and wider European electricity markets, where distributed assets call for site-level dispatch. This is not general energy software. Pollen dispatches distributed batteries in European markets.
The team
Energy markets, distributed systems, and grid optimization inform our work.
Rui Bento is Pollen's CEO and founder. His background spans energy trading operations and demand-response programs. He created Pollen to address dispatch for distributed assets across the grid.
Sofia Andrade, Pollen's CTO, works across distributed-systems infrastructure and real-time data pipelines. She leads platform architecture, with particular attention to dispatch latency within 15-minute settlement periods.
Lucas Ferreira leads dispatch engineering at Pollen. His background covers grid-optimization modeling and battery management software. He develops the engine that decides whether each site should charge, hold, or sell in each settlement period.
How we work
Operators, then features
Pollen capabilities begin with problems encountered by pilot operators. We prioritize the operational edge cases that affect dispatch, rather than filling a comparison table with features.
A trace for every dispatch decision
Dispatch can be trusted when its reasoning is auditable. Pollen logs each command with the relevant price context and asset state, so operators can see why the action occurred.
Site-level, not fleet-wide
One rule across a fleet overlooks the conditions of individual assets. Pollen optimizes per site because revenue differences emerge at that level.
Bootstrapped focus
Pollen is self-funded. Bootstrapping keeps attention on the needs of paying operators, rather than features shaped for an investor narrative.
Lisbon, Portugal
Pollen is based in Lisbon, on Avenida da Liberdade. Portugal provides a natural base for work on dispatch across the Iberian Peninsula and European electricity markets.
Join a pilot or contact us
We work directly with operators to onboard fleets and set their dispatch policy. If you manage distributed solar or storage assets in a European electricity market, we would like to hear from you.