E.ON is increasing its digitalisation offering through the acquisition of a majority stake in German start-up gridX.
Founded in 2016, the smart grid intelligence company develops digital platform solutions that connect, control and optimise decentralised energy resources.
The digital smart grid platform Xenon, which was developed by gridX, offers comprehensive options for the control and holistic optimisation of various decentralised plants.
E.ON has already been working with the company since 2017, with gridX having installed an intelligent load management system at E.ON’s headquarters in Essen that enables dynamic charging of electric vehicles (EVs).
In this system, the available energy for the chargepoints is dynamically distributed between the chargepoints and taken into account in the building’s load management. This allows more electric cars to be charged at the same time or with higher charging power if the consumption in the building falls, for example.
“The acquisition of a majority stake in gridX is another step on our path toward the decentralised and, above all, digital energy world of the next decades,” said Thomas Birr, chief strategy and innovation officer at E.ON.
In 2020, E.ON launched a venture capital platform designed to invest in digital technologies and business models, with this providing funding, mentoring and connections to accelerate the growth trajectory of digital, scalable and asset-light businesses transforming the energy ecosystem.