10.09.2026
Automation has long ceased to be a technology for comfort. Today, it covers residential and commercial facilities, industrial and agricultural enterprises, helps to manage energy resources more effectively and becomes an important component of modern infrastructure. For Ukrainian technology companies, this is both a challenge and an opportunity – to develop their own products, compete with international brands and enter new markets.
One of the companies developing this direction in Ukraine is i3 Engineering – a Ukrainian manufacturer of solutions in the field of Smart Home, building automation and energy management. The company has created its own ecosystem based on Atom series controllers, software, cloud services and a mobile application. Its solutions have already been implemented in more than 3,000 apartments and private houses, as well as in business centers, hotels, museums, restaurants, agricultural and industrial facilities. Among the areas that i3 Engineering is actively developing today is the i3 Energy Flow intelligent energy management system, which allows you to manage loads, batteries and inverters.
The company is simultaneously expanding its presence in Ukraine and working on international scaling. Its distribution network already covers Poland, Italy, Portugal, Nigeria, the UAE and Saudi Arabia, and among the priorities are new partners, integrators and an increase in the number of implemented projects.
In an interview with Energy Club journalist Olena Karpachova, the head of i3 Engineering Oleh Ostroverkh spoke about the company’s current activities, changes in demand for automation, the most promising market segments and the development of energy management. They also talked about the competition of the Ukrainian manufacturer in international markets, the development of the partner network, technological trends, challenges for the engineering team and the nearest plans of i3 Engineering.
– Mr. Olezhe, what is 2026 for i3 Engineering in terms of business development? Which areas are currently showing the greatest dynamics and how has customer demand for automation changed compared to previous years?
– 2026 is the year when we finally went beyond the classic “smart home” as an option for comfort. Two areas are showing the greatest dynamics: energy management through i3 Energy Flow and work with large facilities – hotels and cottage towns. This is no coincidence: customer demand has shifted from “I want to control the light from my phone” to “I want to understand and control how much energy I spend and how quickly it pays off”. The war accelerated this transition – today automation is more often sold as a tool for energy sustainability and security, rather than just comfort.
– Energy management is gradually becoming one of the key areas of i3 Engineering. What tasks do customers most often seek to solve with the help of i3 Energy Flow today: reducing costs, optimizing the operation of storage devices, managing loads, or ensuring energy autonomy?
– Most often, it is a combination of several tasks at once. i3 Energy Flow allows you to automate the consumption, storage, and use of energy at the facility: managing batteries and inverters, optimizing loads, and distributing energy between sources. In practice, business customers usually come with a specific pain point – a high bill for peak load or a desire to be less dependent on the grid – and already during the implementation process they realize that the system gives them autonomy, control, and savings at the same time.
– To what extent is Ukrainian business ready to invest not just in backup power, but in intelligent energy management? What, in your opinion, is the biggest obstacle to this process today: the cost of technologies, lack of awareness or lack of clear business models?
– Honestly, the biggest obstacle is the lack of a clear business model, not the price or awareness of the technology itself. We see this even at the level of our own partners and distributors: it is often unclear how to quickly calculate an object, how to select equipment for specific tasks, and most importantly – how much exactly the partner will earn on this and in what time. Until this chain becomes simple and transparent – both for the end customer and for the one who sells him the solution – the transition from “just backup power” to “intelligent energy management” will remain slower than the technology itself allows.
– i3 Engineering works simultaneously with residential, commercial, agricultural and industrial facilities. Which of these segments is the most strategically interesting for the company today and why?
– The most strategically interesting today is the hotel segment, and not because it is the largest, but because it is already a proven, confirmed product: our solutions work in Bukovel hotels – Skogur, Mountain Residence, Twins, in the Fomich hotel chain. Each such facility has strict requirements for reliability and typical usage scenarios, which I then tightenquality of the product for the residential segment as well. The second interesting direction that is actively growing is cottage towns: there is still relatively weak competition there, and the demand for premium suburban real estate with smart engineering solutions is steadily growing.
– A separate challenge for the Ukrainian manufacturer is competition with large international brands. What is the main competitive advantage of i3 Engineering today and what is the most difficult thing for a Ukrainian manufacturer to overcome in foreign markets?
– Our main advantage is that we are both a manufacturer and a developer: we have a direct line of influence on the product roadmap, a wide range of Atom series controllers and an open REST API for integration with third-party systems, and the economics for partners are more profitable than for classic wired systems like KNX. The products are CE certified, and in 2022 we received the World Smart Home Award. The most difficult thing in foreign markets is not technical competitiveness, but trust in a young brand: big players have decades of history and a developed community of integrators behind them, and we still need to earn this trust project by project, certificate by certificate.
– The company is already developing an international presence and partner network. In which markets do you currently see the greatest potential for i3 Engineering and what needs to change within the company in order to move from individual export projects to systematic international scaling?
– Today, our distributors operate in Poland, Italy, Portugal, Nigeria, the UAE and Saudi Arabia – and we see these markets, as well as those adjacent to them, as a point of further growth. But to move from individual export agreements to system scaling, we ourselves need to change the model of working with partners: less focus on mass and more on a small number of system partners with whom we build a full-fledged partner program – training, technical support, ready-made standard solutions. Scaling “widely” without this foundation simply overloads our support, not giving a proportional result.
– Automation technologies are changing rapidly: artificial intelligence, predictive analytics, IoT, new storage systems and electromobility. What technological trends do you consider the most promising for i3 Engineering, and which of them are already being transformed into specific products or solutions of the company?
– The most promising direction for us is predictive consumption analytics paired with storage management, and this is no longer a theory: this is what i3 Energy Flow is built on, which today optimizes the load and manages batteries and inverters at real facilities. The next logical step is deeper integration with electromobility and wider use of open data exchange protocols so that our ecosystem can easily talk to solutions from other manufacturers, and not be closed.
– For a manufacturer of technological equipment, its own developments and production stability are critically important. What are the biggest challenges facing the Ukrainian engineering team today – from the component base and production to the search for specialists and investments in R&D?
– The biggest cross-cutting challenge is people. The war significantly reduced the number of available engineers, electricians, installers and developers on the market, and this is felt at all levels – from our own engineering team to partner integrators in the regions. The second challenge is the pace of product development: the market is rapidly moving towards new standards for device interaction, and it is important for us to have time to develop areas that are not yet fully closed – in particular, access control systems and ready-made standard integration solutions – while maintaining the stability of current production.
– How is the customer approach to the concept of a “smart building” changing? Is the market moving from automation for the sake of comfort to complex systems where comfort, security and energy efficiency are combined into one ecosystem?
– Yes, and this is one of the most noticeable shifts of the last two years. Previously, a “smart home” was sold exclusively as comfort – both on the market and in our own marketing. Today, the customer more often asks not “how can I turn on the lights more conveniently”, but “how can I be energy independent and secure the facility” – and comfort becomes one of the elements of a wider ecosystem, along with security and energy efficiency, and not the main goal. We are consciously rebuilding communication around this.
– What do you want to see i3 Engineering in the near future? What results – in products, geography of presence, number of partners or implemented projects – will be an indicator for you personally that the company is moving in the right direction?
– The maximum program for the near future is the automation of new business centers, hotels, gas stations and agricultural enterprises, and an increase in the number of integrated devices to over 10,000. But personally, for me, the main indicator is not the number itself, but the quality of the partner network: when a small number of strong system partners are self-sufficient,tically and confidently leads complex objects from the first contact to implementation, without constant manual support from our side. This will mean that the model is truly scalable, and not based solely on the efforts of the i3 team.
Today, i3 Engineering already has its own product, implemented projects and experience in international markets. The next step is to turn these developments into a scalable system that can compete not with individual solutions, but with a holistic ecosystem and a strong partner network. And if the company manages to realize its stated ambitions – from new business centers, hotels and agricultural enterprises to over 10 thousand integrated devices, this will not be just another stage of i3 Engineering’s growth. This will be an indicator that Ukrainian engineering technology is able to create world-class products, scale beyond the domestic market and find its place among global players.
