e.Ray was founded in Darmstadt in 2015 with a simple question: how can sustainable energy systems be operated where the power grid is thin? The first funding step came from Climate-KIC; shortly after, we joined the ESA Business Incubator Darmstadt. In those years we built solar microgrids, mobile power plants and the portable MYRAY system.
2017 brought the decisive turning point: in the research project EMOR – Energy and Management of Rivers we recognised that the bigger problem was not energy, but the data gap on the state of our waters. From an energy startup we became a water-monitoring company. In 2018 we became ESA Prime Contractor for the climate service Rain-Belt-River-Nexus – the first commercial bridge between satellites and rivers.
In 2021 we won the Hesse prize and the global overall award at the Galileo Masters Awards. Then came the local pilot “Schlaues Wasser Darmstadt”, the industry partnership with s::can / Badger Meter and the launch of our satellite-based platform SWIM.
Today WAMO stations are running in Hesse and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. The Smart City model project “meer.zukunft.seen” put 21 more stations into operation. The idea from 2015 has remained – the technology and the answer have evolved: water is the task, data is the method, continuity is the lever. And out of that monitoring experience grows the next step: not only understanding water bodies, but actively supporting them where needed.
