Northpool

Northpool employs operational meteorologists, and for a trading firm that tells you most of what you need to know. This Leiden shop trades short-term European power, and weather is the signal. Founded in 2013, it forecasts wind and solar output with machine learning to anticipate the supply and demand imbalances that move intraday and day-ahead electricity.

It trades its own account but also sits inside the grid's plumbing, providing balancing services to electricity system operators. Five desks now cover spot power, financial power, physical gas, cross-commodities, and algorithmic trading, run on a modern cloud and data stack built mostly in-house. The firm has opened a Canadian entity in Vancouver, carrying its weather-driven model beyond Europe for the first time.