December 19, 2025: Wärtsilä, the Finland-based technology group, has appointed Luke Witmer as VP of software engineering for its energy storage business.

Wärtsilä, which announced the appointment on December 11, said Witmer had been instrumental in the group’s technology evolution since 2015, before its acquisition in 2017 of Greensmith Energy.

Over the past decade, he has helped drive development of the group’s GEMS digital energy platform — Wärtsilä’s proprietary software for monitoring, controlling, and optimizing complex power systems — now in its 16th year of development.

GEMS manages all assets including batteries to boost uptime and efficiency, forecasting and optimizing energy dispatch with ancillary services.

Wärtsilä Energy Storage became an independent reporting unit within the group last April.

Under Witmer’s leadership of the Data Science division, the platform’s forecasting, optimization and analytics capabilities have advanced significantly, Wärtsilä said.

Witmer said: “Software is at the heart of today’s energy transition. Energy storage is enabled by advanced software, and the renewable transition is not possible without energy storage.”