Innovating for the future

Vaisala’s 85 years of innovation, part 3/3 - To celebrate Vaisala’s anniversary, we’ll publish a series of blogs, where we take a look back where it all started, and recollect what we have been up to for the past five years.

Throughout its history of 85 years, Vaisala has looked to the future and been the forerunner in many science-based measurement innovations.  In the first and second parts of the blog series we revisited some milestones from the recent years. Now let’s dive into what the new decade looks like for Vaisala. Even though only a third of the current year has passed, Vaisala has been busy with great achievements.

Discussing product launches and new innovations, we started the year by redefining weather intelligence with first-of-its-kind plug-and-play weather solution, Vaisala Beacon, to support business operations and meteorology. Beacon leverages a groundbreaking weather and environmental intelligence platform to provide high-quality measurements, efficiency, connectivity, and usability.

We also announced first-of-its-kind lidar-based atmospheric measurement device, the Ceilometer CL61, which provides atmospheric, cloud height, and mixing layer data with depolarization. The CL61 is an unprecedented lidar ceilometer that improves standard ceilometer reporting by leveraging depolarization technology to provide more refined and accurate data for greater situational awareness.

During the first quarter of 2021 we also introduced another sustainable measurement solution for the biogas production process to support renewable energy production and help fight climate change. The unique Vaisala MGP262 is used for optimizing the process of upgrading biogas to biomethane, to increase efficiency and revenue, and to control and decrease harmful methane slip to the atmosphere.

Image

Great technological and sustainable milestones

In the beginning of 2021, we announced achieving an important sustainability goal that we set out to do in 2015: we reached our target to use 100% renewable energy in our premises by the end of 2020. The goal includes all Vaisala locations worldwide with significant energy consumption, and was achieved with a combination of self-generated clean energy and green electricity products purchased from local energy companies.

In February this year, NASA’s Perseverance rover’s interplanetary journey was completed and our technology onboard landed safely on Mars once again. The rover has delivered the first humidity and pressure data from the planet, and all systems are “go” for commencing regular and ongoing measurements! With the arrival of our humidity and pressure measurement technology onboard Perseverance, the first atmospheric observation network on another planet is being created. Another industry first!

We also opened the doors of our brand new research and development center in the spring of 2021 to continue innovating for a sustainable future. The new premises are located at our headquarters in Vantaa, Finland. The center creates a unique environment for product development from the start of co-innovation with customers to hardware and software design, development, and testing; even production is largely taking place on the same campus. 

The way forward

Image

As the global market leader in weather, environmental, and industrial measurements, we believe that the requirements and need for accurate and reliable data will increase in the future, serving as a source for new growth and innovation opportunities. 

Creating solutions and products for observations for a better world through sustainable innovations has always been at the core of Vaisala. We are engaged in finding novel ways to support our customers in making informed and sustainable decisions for our planet’s future. We continue to innovate new measurement solutions and technologies in collaboration with the scientific community, customers, and partners.

Nobody knows what the future holds. The ever-changing business environment continues to shape the company as our customers’ needs are constantly changing. We look back on the last 85 years with pride, but we do not stop there. Our researchers and engineers continue to work tirelessly on new ideas, visions, and innovations to take measurements a step further, providing us with data from new environments, new parameters, and even new planets.

<< Read the first part of our anniversary blog series

<< Read the second part of our anniversary blog series