EnergyNet is the “Internetification” of Electrical Distribution for the 21st century Grid
The 20th‑century grid was built for centralized generation and predictable demand. Today it’s straining under renewable variability, climate‑driven extremes, fast‑rising electrification, and increasing cyber risk. The answer isn’t just more capacity, it’s a new architecture.
EnergyNet enables Smart Micro Grids (SMG), the missing link between micro grids and the traditional grid. Like Internet for data networks, EnergyNet provides a common, interoperable way to connect, control, and exchange power and information across diverse assets and sites.
Each Smart Micro Grid retains local autonomy while seamlessly coordinating with neighbors and the wider grid. The result: a flexible, resilient, and scalable energy network built for the 21st century.
What EnergyNet enables (bullets)
Interoperability: A shared standard to connect generation, storage and charging across vendors.
Distributed control: Local decision‑making with secure coordination, no single point of failure.
Open platform: Open‑source software + reference hardware for transparency, extensibility, and trust.
Energy Security and Affordability require more than adding generation; they require new ways to distribute energy where and when it’s needed. Legacy, centralized networks or the Plain Old Grid System (POGS) were built for one‑way power flows and slow change. Today, EU deregulation and the emergence of energy communities unlock something new: parallel neutral infrastructure.
Neighborhood‑level lines, storage, and Smart Micro Grids can now be financed and deployed alongside the incumbent grid, improving reliability, cutting losses, and integrating renewables faster.
But parallel infrastructure alone doesn’t close the gap. The missing link is the market and control fabric that coordinates assets, clears transactions, and makes cash flows bankable. That’s EnergyNet. By routing local supply to local demand, pricing flexibility in real time, and automating settlement and compliance, EnergyNet converts Energy Security and Energy Affordability into a clear investment case for distribution. Capital flows where returns are predictable; with the POGS gridlock removed, community‑scale networks can scale.
The result: a distribution model where clean electrons move efficiently, outages are contained, and costs trend down, not by mandate, but by market. With EnergyNet connecting deregulation to deployable infrastructure, the green transition becomes commercially possible.
EnergyNet “Internetifies” power distribution by shifting coordination to an open, shared control layer. Using the open Energy Protocol (EP), assets become addressable and programmable, enabling digital orchestration of DERs within a Smart Micro Grid and between Smart Micro Grids. A joint digital control plane mediates exchanges with the Plain Old Grid System (POGS) or the incumbent public grid operators and their transmission/distribution systems), and no electricity is transferred until both the local EnergyNet controller and POGS consent to the transaction.
The result is a modular, vendor-neutral architecture that scales like the internet, bridges isolated micro grids with the legacy grid, and strengthens resilience while preserving compliance and market settlement.
Read more: https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.08152
