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Best of LinkedIn: E-world 2026 · Best of LinkedIn: Digital Transformation & Tech

• 0:00
  Speaker 0: This episode is provided by Thomas Allgaier and Frennis, based on the most relevant LinkedIn posts about eWorld twenty-twenty six.
• 0:07
  Speaker 0: Frenis supports ICT enterprises with market and competitive intelligence decoding emerging technologies customer insights regulatory shifts in competitor strategies.
• 0:16
  Speaker 0: so product teams and strategy leaders don't just react but shape the future.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: Welcome to The Deep Dive!
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: So today we are basically walking the virtual halls of Mesa Essen.
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  Speaker 1: We're going to unpack the big trends from eWorld, twenty-twenty six.
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  Speaker 1: Right?
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  Speaker 1: And I have to say looking at all of the LinkedIn commentary we've pulled my whole idea for this event has kind
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  Speaker 0: of shifted.
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  Speaker 0: Oh yeah!
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  Speaker 0: How so?
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  Speaker 0: because you know normally think E World is just a lot of suits talking kilowatts and gas pipes.
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  Speaker 1: That was The Old World.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, that feels like ancient history looking at this stuff.
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  Speaker 1: This is much more a massive ICT and tech convergence event.
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  Speaker 1: The lines have just completely blurred.
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  Speaker 1: You can't really pull the electron apart from data packet anymore.
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  Speaker 0: That's perfect way to put it.
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  Speaker 0: If i had one word Every single source we looked at, it's execution.
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  Speaker 1: Execution not vision or strategy?
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  Speaker 0: No exactly.
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  Speaker 0: in past years It was all flashy slogans.
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  Speaker 0: these big twenty forty targets.
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  Speaker 0: You know We should do this.
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  Speaker 0: the tone In twenty twenty six feels radically different.
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  Speaker 0: okay its way.
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  Speaker 0: less we Should and much more.
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  Speaker 0: here is how we are doing.
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  Speaker 0: Yeah pragmatic decarbonization, digital platforms and the real nuts-and-bolts of it all.
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  Speaker 0: We're past the why in deep into how.
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  Speaker 1: that makes a lot of sense.
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  Speaker 1: The what is settled right?
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  Speaker 1: we have to decarmonize now.
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  Speaker 1: It's a fight over at the actual engineering And the economic levers to pull.
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  Speaker 0: so to keep us on track We've broken this down Into four key clusters.
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  Speaker 0: we saw everywhere In the commentary.
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  Speaker 0: first up Digitalization in AI, which is kind of the brain of the whole operation.
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  Speaker 0: Then we'll get into back bone grids and flexibility.
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  Speaker 0: after that a reality check on hydrogen and green molecules And will finish up where it really matters to people mobility and buildings.
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  Speaker 0: solid
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  Speaker 1: plan.
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  Speaker 1: Let's jump into the digital side.
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  Speaker 1: all
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  Speaker 0: right theme one Digitalization an AI.
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  Speaker 0: It feels like you couldn't walk five feet in SN without tripping over an AI algorithm.
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  Speaker 0: But is it just buzz or?
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  Speaker 0: Is it doing real work?
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  Speaker 0: because we've been hearing AI will save the grid.
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  Speaker 0: for what?
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  Speaker 0: five years now It's
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  Speaker 1: definitely doing work, but I think the framing has changed.
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  Speaker 1: It's not this you know futuristic add-on.
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  Speaker 1: It's being talked about as the control layer
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  Speaker 0: and control layer.
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  Speaker 1: yeah Laura Sophie Bother from Deloitte had a really strong post on that.
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  Speaker 1: She said energy isn't just about generation in grids anymore.
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  Speaker 1: It's about i'm quoting her here data automation And connecting systems at scale.
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  Speaker 0: Connecting Systems at Scale sounds great But what does that mean for the bottom line?
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  Speaker 1: Well, she was talking about digital twins and how AI is creating measurable value now.
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  Speaker 1: Okay Think about it if you have a perfect digital copy of a wind farm You can run thousands of simulations predict failures before they happen.
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  Speaker 1: It's moving from just monitoring things to predictive control.
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  Speaker 0: That measurable value part is so key.
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  Speaker 0: And I saw Nora Schultz EON was on this topic too, but she was looking at it from the customer side of things.
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  Speaker 1: Ah!
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  Speaker 1: The customer experience.
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  Speaker 1: yeah that gets lost sometimes in these deep tech talks
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  Speaker 0: totally.
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  Speaker 0: She was saying digital intelligence is the main lever for That experience.
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  Speaker 0: not just you know Digital bills But AI for Things like congestion forecasting or automated Customer service.
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  Speaker 0: It's about managing all that complexity.
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  Speaker 0: so You the user don't have.
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  Speaker 0: and that word
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  Speaker 1: complexity Is doing a lot of work there?
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  Speaker 1: Because as the system gets more complex, the risk changes.
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  Speaker 1: Right?
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  Speaker 1: I saw a post from Carolyn Hoffman at Interatech on this.
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  Speaker 1: she was focused on secure AI especially for municipal structure.
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  Speaker 0: Municipal structures so like local utilities.
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  Speaker 0: that can't work
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  Speaker 1: exactly.
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  Speaker 1: her point was it's not enough to just unleash AI to optimize a grid.
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  Speaker 1: you have to do it responsibly.
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  Speaker 1: if your smart city is built on a shaky digital foundation You're just creating new vulnerabilities.
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  Speaker 0: That ties in perfectly with the infrastructure side.
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  Speaker 0: You can't have secure AI without a secure cloud.
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  Speaker 0: Benedict Scherzinger from Stackit, he brought up a term.
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  Speaker 0: I think we're going to hear lot more digital sovereignty.
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  Speaker 1: Oh yeah that's huge topic right now and this is where energy transition meets well geopolitics.
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  Speaker 1: He was talking about cloud solutions which are one hundred percent compliant with European security standards.
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  Speaker 1: A Cloud Made In Germany they call it
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  Speaker 0: Which is so interesting because energy sovereignty used to mean where's our gas from?
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  Speaker 0: Now it means, Where's Our Data Stored.
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  Speaker 1: It's the same thing if The grid runs on data...the data center Is as critical As a power plant.
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  Speaker 1: If you lose your control data..The lights go out.
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  Speaker 1: You can't separate them anymore.
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  Speaker 0: Okay before we leave digital I want To touch On A Sales Angle From Dennis Hergenroder At Edesso.
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  Speaker 0: He argued AI Is Turning Marketing From A Cost Center Into A Profit Center.
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  Speaker 1: That's a bold claim for marketing, especially at a utility.
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  Speaker 0: It is but the logic makes sense.
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  Speaker 0: he's talking about using data to predict what customers need.
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  Speaker 0: so if your data shows a customer just bought an EV you can proactively offer them a dynamic charging tariff.
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  Speaker 0: You're not just selling you're solving a problem For them.
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  Speaker 1: that's a good point.
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  Speaker 1: it moves The Utility from being A simple commodity provider To more of a service partner.
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  Speaker 0: Exactly.
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  Speaker 0: But And it's a big butt.
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  Speaker 0: Yeah, all this digital intelligence needs of physical body and if your nervous system is shot the brain can't do much.
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  Speaker 0: Which
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  Speaker 1: brings us right to our second theme grids and flexibility.
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  Speaker 1: The backbone.
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  Speaker 1: yeah, and if Digitalization as the brain the grid is the nervous system?
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  Speaker 1: Right now It's the bottleneck.
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  Speaker 0: Oh you could feel the frustration in some of these posts.
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  Speaker 0: Stefan Dollar just said it bluntly more grids not fewer renewables.
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  Speaker 1: Classic dollar, no minced words there.
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  Speaker 0: He was basically saying look the energy transition only works if the grids keep up.
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  Speaker 0: stop blaming The wind farms and the wires aren't ready.
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  Speaker 0: We're building generation way faster than we're building transmission
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  Speaker 1: And that bottleneck leads directly to the biggest buzzword of the whole event Flexibility.
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  Speaker 0: it's always flexibility isn't?
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  Speaker 1: It is but the context feels different.
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  Speaker 1: its not just an engineering idea anymore Its a financial one.
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  Speaker 1: Halvard Granheim from Statcraft pointed out that power prices are swinging like crazy.
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  Speaker 1: Right,
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  Speaker 0: negative price is then huge spikes.
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  Speaker 1: Exactly so he says.
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  Speaker 1: batteries and flexible assets our fast becoming Europe's new hedge.
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  Speaker 1: It's not just for keeping the lights on it's a financial tool for managing risk.
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  Speaker 0: That makes me think of a post by Christopher Freud.
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  Speaker 0: He had this great line.
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  Speaker 0: he said The winners to the energy transition won't be those who build the biggest but Those Who Build the smartest.
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  Speaker 1: A perfect summary of the shift in the BAS market, The Battery Storage Market.
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  Speaker 1: Right!
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  Speaker 0: He wasn't focused on battery chemistry.
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  Speaker 0: he was talking about building business cases that actually work year after year.
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  Speaker 0: Can your batteries switch from one grid service to another instantly?
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  Speaker 0: If not you're leaving money at a table
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  Speaker 1: And speaking kind of smart switching.
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  Speaker 1: there is specific tech example Dr Christian Von Toll at Weidmiller showing off EBS Relay Converter.
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  Speaker 0: Okay I saw it Quick plain English version for us.
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  Speaker 0: What does that thing actually do?
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  Speaker 0: Sure.
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  Speaker 1: So think about all the existing buildings, millions of them.
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  Speaker 1: they're not smart.
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  Speaker 1: this device is basically a retrofitable brain.
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  Speaker 1: it connects those old buildings to the Smart Grid.
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  Speaker 1: It lets the grid securely control things inside the house like a heat pump or an EV charger.
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  Speaker 0: so its like a translator
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  Speaker 1: Exactly!
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  Speaker 1: It let's the old infrastructure talk to new system which is huge.
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  Speaker 1: we can't just tear down every building and start over.
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  Speaker 1: No
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  Speaker 0: Of course Not.
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  Speaker 0: But even with smart devices, there's a bigger problem.
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  Speaker 0: Ryan Bottoms had pretty sobering take on this.
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  Speaker 0: He said the grid connection queues are overflowing.
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  Speaker 1: The queue problem!
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  Speaker 1: Yeah you hear about it all of time Gigawatts.
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  Speaker 1: is solar just waiting for a connection
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  Speaker 0: Right?
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  Speaker 0: and he argued we need to move from first come First served To first ready First Served.
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  Speaker 0: That
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  Speaker 1: would be game changer.
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  Speaker 1: right now A speculator can block project that will go tomorrow.
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  Speaker 0: Exactly It'll clear out all zombie projects.
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  Speaker 0: It's a bit controversial, but it fits that execution theme.
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  Speaker 0: You know we don't have time to wait.
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  Speaker 1: agreed and speaking of reality checks Let's move to Theme three Hydrogen in green molecules.
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  Speaker 1: the tone here felt well different A lot more sober.
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  Speaker 0: sober is the perfect word.
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  Speaker 0: a couple years ago hydrogen was magic dust.
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  Speaker 0: now Sabine Augustin from RWE she said The hype has given way too healthy realism.
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  Speaker 1: And what does healthy realism look like?
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  Speaker 1: two accompany?
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  Speaker 1: Like rwe
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  Speaker 0: It means admitting that hydrogen is crucial.
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  Speaker 0: Yeah, but it needs help.
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  Speaker 0: She was talking about storage and contracts for difference to make the business case actually work.
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  Speaker 0: Green Hydrogen Is Still Just Too Expensive Without Subsidies And
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  Speaker 1: you have To Move It Around.
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  Speaker 1: I Saw Kirsten Westfall From BDUW Was Talking About The Core Hydrogen Network.
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  Speaker 1: i Think It Was Nine Thousand Kilometers Planned By Twenty Thirty Two?
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  Speaker 1: IT
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  Speaker 0: IS On Paper.
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  Speaker 0: But Her Big Warning Was Planning Does Not Equal Market.
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  Speaker 1: Ouch!
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  Speaker 0: That's a fair point.
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  Speaker 0: It's true, isn't it?
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  Speaker 0: Just drawing lines on the map is not enough.
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  Speaker 0: You need to scale up together.
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  Speaker 0: She said everyone was just waiting for someone else To make their first move.
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  Speaker 1: The classic chicken and egg problem
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  Speaker 0: Totally...The steel plant waits For the pipeline.
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  Speaker 0: The pipeline Waits for producer.
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  Speaker 0: It'a stalemate.
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  Speaker 1: Dr Stephanie Kesting from Thyssen Gas Had an interesting idea On how to break that.
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  Speaker 1: She asked if A national quota could
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  Speaker 0: work A Quota.
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  Speaker 0: Did she support it?
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  Speaker 1: Her conclusion was nuanced.
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  Speaker 1: She said the goal has to be CO² reduction, not technological ideology.
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  Speaker 1: basically don't hit hydrogen against biogas if it cuts carbon use.
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  Speaker 0: that really resonates with what Simone Peter was saying about domestic bio gas being overlooked.
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  Speaker 0: were obsessed with imported LNG or future Hydrogen from the media but we're ignoring a source of energy.
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  Speaker 0: We have right here at home
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  Speaker 1: this shiny new toy syndrome
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  Speaker 0: for sure But there is some movement on the market side.
• 9:56
  Speaker 0: Eric Raku had a great insight on trading, he said even though of big infrastructure still years away.
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  Speaker 0: The trading products are already emerging.
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  Speaker 1: Your choice product race?
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  Speaker 0: It's signal that real hydrogen prices on the horizon.
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  Speaker 0: When traders start building derivatives you know commodities becoming real
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: Which brings us to our last cluster.
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  Speaker 1: and it may be most important because where we all come in Theme four Mobility and buildings.
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  Speaker 0: The end user integration, where this stuff stops being a theory and starts being something you park in your garage.
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  Speaker 0: Well
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  Speaker 1: speaking of garages Dominic Bex shared a solution from BMW an EONM that I think he'll love.
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  Speaker 1: It's a vehicle to grid.
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  Speaker 1: offer
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  Speaker 0: the holy grail.
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  Speaker 0: How does it work?
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  Speaker 1: So get this You plug-in Your car let the utility use your battery To help balance the grid And In return you Get A bonus and upto fourteen thousand kilometers Of free charging.
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  Speaker 1: wait
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  Speaker 0: fourteen Thousand Kilometers That's That's like a year of free driving for most people.
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  Speaker 1: Exactly, it is huge deal!
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  Speaker 1: It completely flips the script.
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  Speaker 1: The car no longer just a load...it'a flexible asset.
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  Speaker 1: Instead of paying to fuel your car Your cars kind-of working while you sleep.
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  Speaker 0: Wow But its not all that easy in mobility space.
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  Speaker 0: Nina London shared her study on electric trucks And the biggest hurdle wasn't the truck themselves.
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  Speaker 1: No, rarely was it.
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  Speaker 0: Greed capacity and permitting.
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  Speaker 0: Forty-eight percent of the people they surveyed cited insufficient grid capacity.
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  Speaker 0: Imagine buying a fleet of electric trucks and you can't even plug them in.
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  Speaker 1: So we're right back to that grid bottleneck again, it's all connected.
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  Speaker 1: Let's look at buildings because there is similar dynamic there.
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  Speaker 1: Hogan Lessing from ISTA had great analogy.
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  Speaker 1: He said if want lose weight You need scales.
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  Speaker 1: If wanna save energy You need measure.
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  Speaker 0: Simple but true.
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  Speaker 0: And he gave this massive example of equipping the Berusha Park Stadium.
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  Speaker 1: Right, and the logic is if you can digitize a whole stadium which has crazy complex property You can digitized any building.
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  Speaker 1: it's about getting that visibility.
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  Speaker 1: so you see the waste.
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  Speaker 1: stop at.
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  Speaker 0: It feels like hardware there but intelligence.
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  Speaker 0: just catching up.
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  Speaker 0: Jakob Adelik from E-Charge saw same thing in EV charging.
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  Speaker 0: He called it shift from Hardware to Platform.
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  Speaker 1: That's a crucial distinction.
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  Speaker 1: It used to be just about putting a charging station in the ground, now it is all about smart software that manages everything.
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  Speaker 1: If the charger is broken or app is clunky The hardware is useless.
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  Speaker 0: And to wrap this up Dr.
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  Speaker 0: Dirk from Noventic Group said perfectly Integration.
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  Speaker 1: It's making the heat pump talk to smart meter, which talks to grid and billing system.
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  Speaker 1: That is the execution challenge we started with.
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  Speaker 1: We have all puzzle pieces.
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  Speaker 1: The job now just fitting them together.
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  Speaker 0: So let us bring this home.
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  Speaker 0: What does it mean for someone listening right?
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  Speaker 1: I think eWorld is telling us that vision phase is over.
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  Speaker 1: We are in installation phase now.
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  Speaker 0: The messy middle
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  Speaker 1: The complicated but productive middle.
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  Speaker 1: Digitalization isn't a separate thing, it's the control layer.
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  Speaker 1: Flexibility is not nice to have—it's only way of keeping systems stable and for everything from Hydrogen to EVs…the hardware gets there but the market has to catch up.
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  Speaker 0: It really feels like industry has grown-up.
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  Speaker 0: we're done with glossy brochures down to spreadsheets and API integrations
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  Speaker 1: Precisely.
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  Speaker 1: And for everyone listening, that means the opportunities are in those details now In the software platforms The specific business cases For batteries Navigating those grid cues.
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  Speaker 1: The broad strokes Are painted.
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  Speaker 1: Now we need people To fill-in the rest.
• 13:35
  Speaker 0: Well said An exciting time to be in the weeds of it all Absolutely.
• 13:39
  Speaker 0: If you enjoyed this episode New episodes drop every two weeks.
• 13:42
  Speaker 0: Also check out our other editions on cloud Defense Tech, Digital Products and Services, ICT & Tech Insights, Artificial Intelligence, Sustainability in Green ICT, DefenseTech and HealthTech.
• 13:54
  Speaker 0: Thanks
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: for listening!
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: We'll catch you on the next Deep Dive.
• 13:56
  Speaker 0: Don't forget to subscribe – see ya next time!