Introducing the Montel Group

Welcome! If you’re reading this, you’ve already landed on our Montel Group web page, so congratulations on taking the first step in exploring our new site.

Maybe you’ve never worked with us – or maybe you’ve known us for years – but in either case, we hope this blog post gives you an understanding of who we are and exactly why we’ve decided to create a new home for all the different services within the Montel family. 

We begin back in 1989, almost a decade before the world wide web went live and when the phrase ‘social media’ would probably have described a group of people reading newspapers together. More importantly, it was the year Montel was established in Oslo, as a vendor of the USA’s 4th biggest media corporation at the time, Knight Ridder. This entailed travelling across Scandinavia with the trunk loaded with satellite communications hardware, the cutting-edge technology for data distribution before the internet went live.

Over the next few years, we began building our energy market news and data offering into what became the Montel Online service, now used by professionals in 30 countries. In the process, we've been responsible for several 'firsts' and embraced new technology before it became a given to use it.

Take the Montel Internet Service, for example, which pioneered the use of push technology to update market data in real-time back in 1998. Or think of the first English-German and English-Dutch news services for the power markets, both initiated by Montel.

But that was only the start of Montel’s expansion. Fast-forward to today and we have news bureaus in Norway, Sweden, the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Slovenia, Turkey and Poland, providing live updates on energy markets in eight languages to readers across Europe.

We've continued embracing new technology too. In the 2nd half of 2017, we launched a new division within Montel, harnessing the power of Artificial Intelligence. Through this service, we use machine learning to help operators of renewable generation forecast their production levels with greater precision, making investments into green power more profitable. The same technology works for the demand side too, so we can easily provide predictions for how much electricity consumption you can expect for a given are or portfolio of customers.

The theme of making data work harder continued into the following year, with two new developments. First, we co-founded Energy Quantified, a business that provides simple energy data sourcing and market forecasts based on fundamentals such as the weather (provided by the Swedish Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology). 

That year also saw Montel purchase a majority stake in German business Price it a provider of Price Forward Curves for all major European power and gas, carbon and coal markets. Montel Price it also offers bespoke power plant optimisation tools.

Taking a step back in time again, since the year 2000, we have proudly exhibited at the energy industry’s flagship event, E-World for 20 consecutive years, building many great relationships along the way. Even if the Covid-19 pandemic put a temporary halt to our famous Montel hospitality (and now we are back better than ever!) we found new ways to deliver our insights through our online events.  

With all these businesses and the fledgling tech environment now housed within the Montel Group, we can truly claim to be at the forefront of energy markets. Whether you're interested in the latest news, price forecasts, or using our respected data for your own modelling, there's something for you inside the Montel Group. 

This is why we've pooled our services on this Montel Group website, making it easier for you to pick and choose whichever service you need from a reliable source.

We are sure you now agree, we’ve come a long way from installing satellite dishes on Oslo's rooftops!