Iiro Harjunkoski, Germany

I am grateful to be part of a team that shapes the future of sustainable energy. For more than 25 years now, I’ve been working on production optimization. Since 2008, I have focused on industrial demand-side management as it became clear that energy should play a stronger role in optimizing the operations. The main question is how to realize this, and one clear answer is via stronger integration to the power grids.

What I find thrilling about my work is the multitude of very complex problems that are extremely difficult to optimize. In the long run, solving these challenges increases the sustainability of our daily actions and leads to many truly exciting research questions. Likewise, the diversity of the team at Power Grids expands our awareness and opportunities not only on a technical level but also in terms of understanding different customers and lifestyles.

The company’s mission of “powering good” is something that I subscribe to from my heart; it motivates me to choose sustainable living in my everyday life through simple habits like avoiding driving short distances, recycling, throwing away no food, and replacing light bulbs to LEDs.

As an advocate of social innovation and sustainability, I am looking forward to our future with Hitachi because it is a great company with values and mission that I truly believe in. It is a company for which I am more than willing to give my best – every single day!