© Adobe Stock / Konstatin Yuganov
Projects for tomorrow’s energy world: Future Energy Lab and SET Hub
The screen sitting in front of Michael Detke shows flickering graphics. Michael Detke is the founder of zentur.io, a startup from Landshut that develops software designed to make heat networks more efficient, customer-friendly and environmentally-friendly by capturing all the network data and analysing it.
Another startup, suena, has developed software that allows for the real-time optimisation of energy storage. “We support a profitable marketing of the energy generated and achieve this through automatic communication with the energy installations and the electricity traders”, explains CEO and co-founder Lennart Wilkening. Both founders have benefitted from the SET hub project by the German Energy Agency (dena) (in German only) with its information and advisory services, and from the SET pilot project (in German only), which have allowed their startups to have a positive impact on the energy transition from the seed phase onwards.
Energy startups hub
Several hundred startups are developing innovations for Germany’s energy transition. They can rely on the support of the SET hub for energy startups, which was set up in 2020. It offers information and advisory services from the startup phase to the stage of an established company, including basic knowledge, individual advice, trialling areas and valuable contacts in politics and business. In this way, the SET hub strengthens young companies’ ability to innovate and to play a key role in the energy transition. This successful project has since been incorporated into the Federal Government’s Startup Strategy and is now in its third round, which will end in December 2027.
Successful formats such as the SET Academy (in German only), SET mentoring (in German only), SET Pilots (in German only) and SET Think Tank will continue. There are also new innovation projects bringing together startups and SMEs, a startup programme with higher education institutes, and SET Coaching to support startups in their scaleup phase.
Think tank for the energy transition
dena’s Future Energy Lab will be continued for another three years. Since 2020, it has been acting as a regulatory sandbox and a think tank for shaping the digital future of the energy system. It brings together stakeholders from business, academia and politics. Up until 2027, dena is planning further projects on digital infrastructure (e.g. rollout of smart meters, energy register, cyber security) and data governance (e.g. AI, data spaces, energy efficiency).
Opportunities for networking in the energy and digital sectors
Digital technologies form the basis for the future, interconnected energy system and are already being rolled out. The pilot projects of the Future Energy Lab are promoting the uptake of these and highlight further potential. The regulatory sandbox offers companies and startups from the energy and digital sectors a platform for cooperation, complete with free use of a co-working space in Berlin. The aim is to widen the community and pilot new technologies in the energy sector.