Previously on Tech Odyssey Series: In the last episode of Tech Odyssey, we visited Sound Particles, a 17-person Portuguese company whose technology has made its way into films like Dune and Oppenheimer. This time, we head to Omniflow to see how something as ordinary as a streetlight can be turned into a multi-use system for energy, charging, and connectivity.
In most cities, streetlights are easy to ignore. By day, they disappear into the background. By night, they do one simple job: light the road.
At Omniflow, Pedro Ruão sees them differently.
In the fifth episode of Tech Odyssey, we visit the Portuguese company and meet its founder and CEO, who has spent more than a decade rethinking what a streetlight can be. In his version, it is not just a lighting fixture. It can run on wind and solar power, reduce grid electricity consumption by more than 90 percent, and be installed on an existing pole in around 15 minutes. Inside the same structure, it can also support EV charging, communications modules, sensors, and AI-powered video analytics.
What Ruão shows is not a concept. It is a working system designed for the street.
One of the larger models we saw is about 1.2 meters in diameter and is typically mounted on poles 8 to 10 meters high. On the ground, it looks substantial. Once installed, it blends much more naturally into the surrounding streetscape. That model also includes EV charging, with a built-in status light that turns green when available and blue and flashing when charging is in progress, making it easy to read from a distance.
Ruão also showed us a smaller version of the system. It uses the same kind of status indicator and adds voice prompts that can announce when charging begins. He says that function can also be used in other settings, including smart bus stops, where the system could estimate how many people are waiting and provide spoken updates on the next bus. The company is also exploring drone-related applications, including charging.
That wider range of use cases is part of what makes Omniflow stand out. The company is not simply adding a few smart features to a streetlight. It is treating the pole as a place where several layers of infrastructure can come together: energy generation, storage, charging, communications, sensing, and data collection.
The energy side is central to the design. The system combines solar and wind power, with onboard batteries storing energy for use when needed. Sensors can capture data such as wind speed, temperature, and solar radiation, while the connected system allows operators to monitor performance remotely and build digital twins around installed units. Ruão also points to a practical advantage in the wind structure itself: airflow helps drive the turbine while also reducing the need to manually clean the solar panels.
Just as important is how quickly the product can be deployed. Omniflow’s current generation is built as a standardized module that can be mounted on existing poles with minimal on-site work. That simplicity matters because the company’s earlier products, while also based on wind and solar energy, were harder to install and required more integration in the field.
Omniflow was founded in 2011, but Ruão says the company did not begin with a fully formed business plan. At the time, he was working in product development elsewhere when a cleantech innovation prize caught his attention. Around the same time, while cycling home one weekend, he saw a wind turbine on a hilltop and began thinking about whether wind power could be designed differently, in a way that would preserve function while reducing visual impact. He built a prototype, tested it, and eventually turned that idea into a company.
Today, Omniflow’s products are distributed in more than 40 countries. Ruão says the company did not originally set out to build something aggressively global from day one. But as the product became more modular and easier to install, it also became easier to deploy in very different markets.
China remains part of that story.
Ruão speaks about the Chinese market with clear interest. He says the opportunity there is significant and that he hopes Omniflow can return more formally. He also points to drone-related trials and a cooperation agreement around using the company’s solution as a landing and charging point. In his view, China is a technological leader in that field, making it a natural place for future collaboration.
He also recalls visiting suppliers in China and coming away with a broader understanding of the country’s manufacturing strength. Many people assume China’s edge is mainly about price, he says, but for some components the difference was not dramatic. The advantage, in his experience, went beyond cost alone.
During our visit, Ruão also took us to see one of Omniflow’s units in operation. Compared with the display model, the installed device looked far less imposing in the actual urban environment. But the same elements were all there: charging, solar panels, wind structure, sensors, and status lights contained within a single system.
Seen up close, Omniflow is not really making a lamp. It is building a compact piece of city hardware and mounting it on a pole.
Next episode: Beyond startups, our next stop is another side of Portugal’s innovation system: INESC TEC and UPTEC.
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