HEMS in Europe

Do you also offer solutions for commercial customers?

Yes. XENON supports a variety of use cases offering solutions ranging from the residential area to C&I customers or up to managing whole Smart Districts. Gatter3 for example manages its headquarter with a solution built on our platform.

How can HEMS providers differentiate their offering from competitors with your solution?

We clearly differentiate by our "build-with" partnership approach - meaning that we do not provide SaaS but our platform as a service with pre-built modules plus the opportunity to further develop solutions along the roadmap of customers. Additionally customers can use APIs to create their own logics / IP and add that to existing building blocks on our platform or integrate alltogether.

How do you see the HEMS market in the future (drivers, segments, players, etc.)?

Besides EVs the rollout of pv systems, batteries and heatpumps as biggest electrical loads are driving the HEMS market. Players are coming from all different verticals and drive competition and push the need to differentiate and be first mover.

Do you also offer installation and support services?

We offer our platform to commercial customers to develop solutions. We do not provide installation services but offer a second level support. Of course we support for first installations though and offer training sessions for partners to train their installers, etc.

What is your take on the requirements for local prosumer flexibility markets and DSO flexibility?

Those markets are really interesting and get more and more attractive, though regulation / regulatory incentive is often still unclear. gridX is targeting those opportunities, e.g. with our partner Westnetz.

What cost savings do you expect from the application of HEMS?

This is highly dependent on many different factors (setup, electricity prices, regulatory framework, etc.). Savings will range from 15-50€ per month but might be even higher given considerable flexible loads and dynamic tariffs.

How can XENON be used to incorporate dynamic tariffs?

XENON optimizes power flows and minimizes energy costs by taking day-ahead prices into account and integrating tariffs via open market APIs. Simple integration of price signals via a public market API or a custom endpoint are possible.

Does optimization only take place on the household level or do you also optimize between households?

XENON uses various forecasting models to optimize power flows, reduce operating costs and maximize self-sufficiency on a household level, at the same time our multi-energy optimizer can optimize within and between households and districts in residential, commercial or industrial applications.

What's the cost of installing a HEMS?

We are not part of the installation process as we work in a B2B environment and our partners roll out the solution. Our gridBox though is very easy to install locally (<10min) as a plug and play system.

Do you think there will be a single protocol to cover all communication with distributed energy resources (PV, HVAC etc.)?

Would make things easier, but we do not see this coming in the close future. But our platform XENON unifies all devices (manufacturer & protocol independent) and provides a single, standardized interface to all DERs.

Is the installation of a smart meter a critical element to HEMS and participation in flexibility markets?

A smart meter is not critical for HEMS for certain use cases like self-sufficiency optimization. But of course smart meters enable other use cases such as time of use tariffs.