Almost everything is still to be electrified. According to Eurostat, in 2024 only 23% of the European Union’s final energy consumption was electricity. The rest is still fuel: diesel in ships, petrol in cars, gas in industry and buildings.
Moving that 77% onto the grid will not happen through one big project. It will happen kilowatt by kilowatt: every car charged in a car park, every yacht that switches off its generator at the berth, every battery installed next to a solar plant. Millions of small assets that add up to a gigawatt transition.
The bottleneck is the connection
Each of those assets connects to the grid through power electronics: a charger, a converter, an inverter. That component decides three things:
- How much it costs to connect the asset. In a car park, bringing power and data to every space can cost more than the charger itself.
- How much grid it uses. A poorly controlled asset draws peak power whenever it wants. A well controlled one adapts to the contracted capacity, the tariff and the site’s other loads.
- Who captures the value. If control sits in the manufacturer’s closed box, so do flexibility, price arbitrage and energy resale.
That is why we talk about grid interfaces: the exact point where an asset meets the grid. And that is why we say power electronics turns a connection into grid capacity: with the right control, more assets can be connected without reinforcing the grid.
What makes an interface “advanced”
At teknoCEA we sum it up in four traits:
- Bidirectional. Energy does not only flow in; it can flow out. A vehicle, a battery or a vessel can give energy back to the building or the grid when needed.
- Driven by business rules. Contracted power, tariff, a vehicle’s departure time, service availability. The equipment decides in real time within the site’s constraints, without depending on the cloud.
- Agnostic. Open standards (OCPP, ISO 15118, Modbus) and access to control. The asset integrates with the system the owner chooses, not the manufacturer’s.
- Designed from scratch. Our own power stage, control and firmware. That lets us redesign the whole unit to bring its cost down, rather than just assembling third-party modules.
A small investment that unlocks the whole asset
The interface is a fraction of the total investment. A charger costs little next to the car; an onboard converter, little next to the yacht. But it is the component that decides whether the asset only consumes or also provides flexibility, cuts the bill or earns revenue.
Where we apply it today
- Wallare Park: AC charging for car parks, with 150 points in service in Barcelona. Plug & Charge available and ready to charge and discharge the vehicle (V2G), which we present on 3 November.
- SHP-X: an onboard shore power converter that lets yachts switch off their generators in any port.
- M³-OPS: a medium-voltage multiport converter that lets a port operate as a microgrid.
Behind all of them is one idea we will keep coming back to: control of the asset should stay with its owner. More on that in Control that stays yours.
Meet us at Smart City Expo, 3–5 November in Barcelona. If you are an investor, we are taking part in the fair’s investor sessions: book a meeting.
Source: Eurostat, final energy consumption, 2024.