Tag Archives: Shift in our Societies

 Todays Need is for Flexibility & Resilience through Energy Ecosystem Alliances.

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I believe there is a strong positioning proposal for forming an Intelligent Integrated Energy Ecosystem to confront the growing Grid Crisis.

Let’s Frame the Challenge– Across Europe, as well as the United States of America and multiple countries or regions globally, electricity grids are reaching structural limits

Increasing renewable penetration, growing electrification, distributed energy resources (DER), and the rise of prosumers have created a coordination problem of enormous complexity.

Taking a different approach to this forming a Grid Alliance

Today’s grid challenges are not the result of technology gaps—they result from ecosystem gaps:

  • Fragmented renewable integration approaches
  • Distributed assets without unified aggregation or operational schemas
  • Intermittency unmanaged across boundaries
  • Grid operators unable to access DER flexibility at scale
  • Investors, OEMs, aggregators, policy makers and system operators working in parallel—not together

This is the classic coordination failure that the Intelligent Integrated Business Ecosystem (IIBE) I have been building was made to find a resolution.

The grid is no longer just a “utility problem.” It is a multi-party ecosystem design problem requiring shared infrastructure, neutral governance, and coordinated intelligence.

A Radically New and Different Proposal:

**The Grid Alliance — An IIBE-Designed Energy Ecosystem**

One potential part of a cluster of Energy Flexibility & Resilience Ecosystem Alliance.

Inspired by exemplars such as the AMPShare Battery Alliance, the proposal is to create a neutral, orchestrated, multi-party Grid Alliance where competitors and stakeholders collaborate on shared infrastructure, shared intelligence, and interoperable standards—while continuing to innovate, compete, and differentiate on applications, markets, and services.

This Alliance would become the coordination fabric enabling Europe’s energy transition to operate at speed and scale.

Why the AMPShare Alliance Offers Potentially Breakthrough Templates

The AMPShare Battery Alliance demonstrates a strategic principle central to IIBE thinking: it rose above competition by collaborating on the foundational layer to unlock greater markets, greater speed, and shared system-level benefits.

Studying this through an Ecosystem Lens any Energy Ecosystem alliance can gai key transferable design lessons that “dampen” competition and elevate co-creation:

1. Shift from Product Logic to Platform Logic

As AMPShare made the battery the platform, the Grid Alliance makes grid flexibility, DER orchestration, and shared intelligence the platform.

2. Standardisation Creates Network Effects

Shared grid data models, interoperability standards, and aggregation protocols would unlock exponential value. More participants → more benefit → more adoption → greater resilience.

3. Coopetition at Its Best

Participants collaborate on the grid-level infrastructure while competing on energy services, optimisation algorithms, customer propositions, and market participation models.

4. Lowering Transaction Costs Across the Entire System

Just as AMPShare removed friction for consumers, a Grid Alliance can without doubt remove friction for:

  • DER participation
  • Interoperability
  • Cross-market flexibility trading
  • Grid services procurement
  • Investment flows

5. Governance Enables Scale

A neutral platform, transparent rules, staged innovation cycles, and open membership would create credibility and attract new entrants—including start-ups, innovators, and regions lacking legacy infrastructure advantages.

6. Multi-Sided Value Creation

The Alliance increases value across all stakeholder groups: so fully engagement them

  • Grid operators: visibility, flexibility, stability
  • DER owners: revenue, access to markets
  • OEMs: expanded demand for devices, inverters, storage
  • Retailers/aggregators: new service models
  • Regulators: faster compliance and implementation
  • Communities & consumers: resilience, lower cost, energy security
  • Investors: predictable scale and reduced risk

The Ecosystem Opportunity- Addressing the Crisis head on

Current Drivers Are Creating “Fertile” Ground to Explore

1. Renewable Penetration is Reaching Critical Stability Limits– The system is buckling under variability, inertia loss, and complexity.

2. Battery Costs Have Collapsed -Mass storage and local batteries can be orchestrated into a virtual grid asset—if standards exist.

3. Regulatory Windows Are Opening (e.g., FERC Order 2222 equivalents in Europe) – Policymakers increasingly mandate DER participation and interoperability.

4. Timelines for Grid Reinforcement Are Too Long Twenty-year infrastructure cycles cannot support five-year energy transitions.

5. Value Is Shifting From Assets to Coordination – The future energy system is less about building more assets and more about orchestrating what already exists.

This is exactly the IIBE lens: intelligence + integration + interconnection as the way to “question and form”

The Proposal Suggested:

A Grid Alliance Based on the IIBE Framework

The Alliance would use the IIBE (Integrated Interconnected Business Ecosystem) as its structural architecture:

1. The Outer Purpose & Shared North Star

“To build a resilient, interoperable, intelligently coordinated energy system that supports the renewable transition, reduces risk, and accelerates grid stability through shared ecosystem collaboration.”

2. The Three Zones of the Intelligent Ecosystem to explore as “trigger points”

Zone 1 — Shared Intelligence & Visibility (The Adaptive Engine)

  • Common data models and exchange frameworks
  • Real-time system visualisation across DER, storage, grid flows
  • Shared analytics for forecasting, optimisation, and incident prevention
  • AI-based grid orchestration complements human oversight

Zone 2 — Shared Infrastructure Layer (The IIBE DOS)

  • Interoperability frameworks for DER and battery systems
  • Standardised aggregation protocols
  • Coordinated flexibility markets
  • Technical standards for VPP integration
  • Security, safety and certification frameworks

This is the “battery platform” equivalent: the layer everyone must unite around.

Zone 3 — Differentiated Value Creation

Each party competes and innovates on:

  • Consumer energy services
  • DER optimisation tools
  • AI optimisation models
  • Demand response offerings
  • Community energy platforms
  • Market-facing products

Competition remains vigorous—but anchored to a shared foundation.

Why a Grid Alliance Is Necessary Now

1. The Problem Is Systemic, Not Individual

No single company, utility, regulator, or technology stack can stabilise the grid alone.

2. Ecosystem Dynamics Create a Multiplying Effect

Coordinated action increases adoption and performance far faster than isolated efforts.

3. Alliances Outperform Bilateral Models in Complex Transitions

The EV charging industry, smart home platforms, and battery alliances show that ecosystem-level coordination beats proprietary silos.

4. Without Cooperation, Everyone Loses

The cost of grid failure—blackouts, curtailed renewables, stranded assets, political backlash—far exceeds the cost of collaboration.

Finding the Strategic Benefits for all within the Energy Alliance

For Grid Operators

  • Increased predictability
  • New flexibility resources
  • Avoided grid reinforcement costs

For Consumers & Communities

  • Fair access to participation
  • Lower cost energy
  • More reliable systems

For OEMs & Tech Providers

  • Expanded market adoption
  • Faster ROI
  • Lower integration complexity

For Regulators

  • Practical implementation of policy goals
  • A coordinated partner for system-wide planning

For Investors

  • Lower risk through standardisation
  • Predictable scaling pathways
  • Higher confidence in returns

**The Call to Action:

Rise Above the Competition for Shared System Success

The grid crisis is the classic ecosystem moment: the system is failing not from lack of technology but from lack of coordination, integration, and shared intelligence.

The lesson from AMPShare is clear: Interoperability and shared standards unlock a market far larger than any single player can create alone.

A Grid Alliance—designed with the IIBE as its guiding architecture—offers a credible, neutral, strategic platform for bringing together:

  • Utilities
  • OEMs
  • DER aggregators
  • Storage providers
  • Policymakers
  • Grid operators
  • Investors
  • Research and innovation bodies
  • Communities and prosumer groups
  • Regulators

The aim is to solve together what no one can solve alone.

This is the moment where ecosystems become the operating model of the energy transition. It is the time to think and design in Ecosystems to build out those more connected and integrated solutions needed for the Grid Crisis we are facing today.

Contact me to explore this further

We need to change the story on the Energy Ecosystem

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I find Mind Maps as a great tool to think, record and review my thoughts. Within a recent evaluation of my positioning in contributing to the energy transition I drew up a series of approaches to undertaking changing the Energy Ecosystem. We need to build out the bigger Energy Ecosystem story.

In my opinion, the burning need is to recast Energy into a new Energy Ecosystem. We need to get the narrative and positioning right and have this as our evolutionary perspective. It is collaboration and co-creation that needs “combined” efforts. Yet, to get there we need to work off the same page in what needs to be achieved and what would give a greater understanding.

Here I am not prescribing a specific energy solution I am suggesting a way to approach the communications within the energy ecosystem

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What are the universal challenges faced by the Energy sector – applying Partner Ecosystems thinking.

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Applying Partner Ecosystem Thinking into the Energy Sector

In my last post I took six of what I feel are the most significant issues: that I believe require Partner Ecosystem thinking and design.

Within the Energy business, to make the enormous changes required in the transitions from fossil fuel to renewables we simply cannot “go it alone”, we need collaborations across all of the parts of energy from power generation, utilization, transmission and distribution, storage and consumption.

I firmly believe it is the ability to collaborate, share and innovate together can rapidly accelerate the transformation we need.

When I re-read this earlier post I increasingly recognized these challenges are broader and need expanding upon.

In some ways these are universal challenges that all involved will need to address and it is this ability to collaborate and co-create that will make that defining difference.

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The many Partner Ecosystem challenges within the Energy Sector

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Considering the design of the Energy Ecosystem through Partner Ecosystems

Partnerships are becoming a very effective way to build the Energy transformation. There are a awful lot of challenges in the energy sector where the complexity becomes to much for one player and they need to partner. There is actually a significant interplay between technological, regulatory and market-driven challenges

Lets just take a look at six of the most significant issues that require Partner Ecosystem thinking and design.

Partner ecosystems in the energy sector face a complex interplay of technological, regulatory, and market-driven challenges.

Here are six of the most significant issues:

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Advanced Energy Solutions

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Powering the Future with Advanced Energy Solutions

The World Economic Forum Advanced Energy Solutions Group is the catalyst for bringing together outstanding change makers, entrepreneurs, financiers and innovators from across the world and recently had one of its meetings to stimulate and encourage this initiative further. Why?

There are enormous opportunities in the clean energy transition but also so many current barriers and pitfalls.

Taking the WEF’s objectives with this group I quote from their website:

“The World Economic Forum’s Advanced Energy Solutions community aims to accelerate, from decades to years, the deployment at industrial scale of advanced solutions such as clean fuels and hydrogen, advanced nuclear, storage and carbon removal. It engages leaders in frontier segments of the energy system that drive the energy transition”.

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Engagement within the Energy Movement

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Engagement in the Energy Transition Movement

How do you encourage engagement? How do you create the conditions that enable collaboration and cooperation to occur? How can we combine all the forces that make up the Energy Transition?

In the past week or so, I have gained a growing belief we are building the momentum to bring the different sources within the Energy Transition together. The conditions are being created.

Let me briefly provide a few stand-out ones that give encouragement

Firstly in Brussels a Clean Tech Investment meeting took place, nicely summarized by Ann Mettler, the Vice President at Breakthrough Energy. Ann posted “Clean Tech Investment: Top of Mind in Brussels 🇪🇺

💨 What a whirlwind: In less than 24 hours, I had two opportunities to talk investment, at a ‘Clean Transition Dialogue’ hosted by EVP Maroš Šefčovič, in the presence of EC President Ursula von der Leyen and a ‘High-Level Investor Dinner’ with Commissioner Iliana Ivanova.

Briefly she noted the significant talking points:
⬆️ More project finance
💶 Mobilize institutional investors
🤝Double down on public guarantees
🆕 Innovation Fund +++
✅ EU Climate Bank Needs Laser Focus on Clean Tech
📑Better planning, guaranteed contracts
✔️DG Competition reality check

That set of bullet points gives only the top layer of an incredible amount of work going on in support of clean energy tech to give it momentum and shows just one of Ann’s incredible personal energy and commitment to getting the Clean Energy underway (Link to post)

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Considering the design of the Energy Ecosystem

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Designing the Energy Transition with Ecosystem Thinking and Design

By fostering greater collaboration and co-creation within the Energy Industry, it is becoming crucial to consider Ecosystems in design and thinking. Ecosystems designed well are robust for navigating the complex landscape of any Energy transition.

The Energy transition we are all facing has such high levels of complexity and challenge. We are undertaking a radical redesign of our energy systems where renewables based on clean energy, decarbonization or low carbon, new distributed business models and rapidly growing demands for electricity are all compressed into a thirty-year agenda to achieve net zero. Collaboration, cooperation and coordination will be paramount, and this is where Ecosystems and Platform technology will become essential to manage these “multiple” transformations needed.

Here in this post is a structured argument for promoting Business Ecosystem thinking and design for those involved in the Energy System, emphasizing the benefits of sharing IP, knowledge, research, market insights, and general improvement potentials when it comes to considering Ecosystems within the Energy Transitions, where collaborations are growing in importance and need. I outline ten areas of consideration.

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Recognizing success stories of Ecosystem thinking in the Energy Transition?

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Ask how we can leverage and use Ecosystem thinking and design to promote innovation within the Energy Transition, as it is a powerful approach to radical change. By fostering collaborations and synergies, you can accelerate the development and adoption of innovative solutions for the energy transition.

A range of success stories showcase the value of ecosystem thinking in different industries relating to the energy transition. These are important to emphasise as they recognize the importance of combining a mix of stakeholders, technologies and organizations in interconnected and interdependent ways.

Before we look at examples of ecosystem thinking and designs applied, we should consider a step-by-step guide to using and applying ecosystem thinking and design applicable to the energy transition.

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We need fresh perspectives in our thinking towards the Energy Transition.

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How do we accelerate the Energy transition? What contribution does fresh innovation provide? If we do not learn to share and collaborate more, we will fail. Simply put, the Energy solutions will not scale or resolve the changes and complexities we have in designing a new Energy Structure with radically different designs and capabilities.

I have been revamping my www.innovating4energy.com offering in a more focused way. So besides “latest posts” I raise relevant issues and offer solutions to help traverse differences and individual company needs by suggesting a more open, ecosystem thinking and design in different structured ways to assist in the energy transformation we urgently need.

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Rationale, Passion and Beliefs: Changing how we approach the Energy transition.

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Questioning the need to change how we approach the Energy transition.

I always determine the end of a year to be a highly reflective one to build out the future rationale, passion, and beliefs in what I do within the Energy transition. You evaluate what you have achieved, missed out on, and built upon all the new understandings and knowledge that constantly “flow” your way.

What really triggered me to go even deeper this year was the outcomes of the CoP28. I wrote a piece “dealing with the raw emotions of the CoP28 event“- it really did “push my buttons”. So much advice and pursuit of making the Energy transition changes seem to be tackled from narrow perspectives, and for me, this needs a very radical rethink and designed approach.

We do seem to be missing out on broader community engagement for this energy transition– I want to change that.

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