From traditional energy supplier to digital solution provider of the future

The best HEMS for E.ON - but how?

Coming from the business of a traditional energy supplier, E.ON Energie Deutschland was one of the first companies to recognize that, in addition to renewable energy resources, digital energy applications are the future of an energy supplier. As E.ON has always been active in the end customer segment, it made sense for the company to offer its loyal customer base holistic solutions. An essential part of this was to provide E.ON's own smart energy management product, which makes "smart energy" accessible to private households via a home energy management system (HEMS). Due to its existing and well-known expertise in this area, gridX, with its proven IoT platform XENON, seemed to be the right partner to support the construction of a smart energy management solution.

The path to a customized HEMS solution

The basic idea behind E.ON's plan to launch its own energy management system (EMS) was to quickly roll out a fully scalable solution. In order to translate this from theory into practice with gridX, gridX experts from the Professional Services team worked hand in hand with the E.ON team. In initial workshops, everything from the go-to-market strategy to the entire customer journey was developed and thought through. Processes were designed and developed across departments and then tested and optimized in so-called "dry runs." gridX experts became a constant part of E.ON project teams so that efficient processes could be created, knowledge built up and the right solution implemented for E.ON and its end customers. 

1,000 EMS in the field in just five months

With the manufacturer-independent energy management solution based on the XENON platform, E.ON now has a system that can be quickly scaled and adapted to individual requirements. Using the API provided by gridX, E.ON can program its own applications and link them seamlessly with XENON. For example, the "E.ON Home" app, which is available across the E.ON Group, can be seamlessly connected to the EMS. This enables integration into the E.ON commodity systems, which forms the basis for flexibility and topics such as Virtual Power Plants (VPP). The cooperation with gridX enabled the E.ON to achieve a rapid rollout speed and equip over 1,000 households with smart energy management in just five months. In line with the E.ON concept, all customers who purchased a photovoltaic (PV) system from the company have received the smart energy management solution since the launch of the EMS. Using the Energy Optimizer module from XENON, all energy flows in a household can be optimized in this way. For example, in addition to optimizing self-consumption by increasing the use of self-generated solar power, costs and emissions can also be saved for households. The diagnostics module also allows all figures from the connected E.ON Home Boxes and all connected household assets to be viewed transparently and evaluated in real time.

The E.ON Home Box, which is based on the gridBox, is installed on site. This serves as a local IoT gateway and is the core of the household’s EMS. It smartly connected all local energy systems and the grid connection point with each other and ensures that all energy flows are optimized. This is also the decisive advantage for E.ON and its customers: thanks to the local control of the IoT gateway designed by gridX, processes take place in real time as latency times are minimized. This gives a household's energy use particular flexibility. The web app provided by gridX allows users to obtain transparent information about and control all energy flows at home at any time. The manufacturer independence of the gridX technology also enables E.ON to offer its customers independence in the choice of system and manufacturer, which is unique among the competition. As of now, systems from 47 manufacturers can be installed in households and linked to XENON. And the cooperation with gridX has another advantage: future topics such as bidirectional charging or practical use cases, such as optimization for dynamic tariffs or time-of-use tariffs, can be added individually.

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