Schneider and Kraken target grid flexibility

Schneider Electric and Kraken have formed a strategic partnership to accelerate the use of electricity demand flexibility by utilities and distribution system operators.

The partnership combines Schneider Electric’s grid visibility, congestion forecasting, One Digital Grid Platform, EcoStruxure DERMS, and wider EcoStruxure ecosystem with Kraken’s AI-powered flexibility orchestration platform. The combined offer is designed to improve monitoring, forecast constraints, and shift demand across electricity networks as large loads and distributed assets place greater pressure on available capacity.

Schneider Electric brings operational grid software, distributed energy resource management capability, and demand-side flexibility tools, while Kraken orchestrates EVs, home batteries, heat pumps, utility-scale storage, generation assets, and industrial loads into coordinated flexible capacity. Together, the companies are targeting a more active use of existing network headroom rather than relying solely on conventional reinforcement.

Utilities and DSOs will be able to use the systems to identify constraints in real time and shift demand during periods of local network pressure. Data centres and large industrial loads are highlighted as target applications, particularly where long waits for grid upgrades can delay investment, site energisation, or capacity expansion.

Electricity demand is rising across several fronts at once, with data centres, manufacturing electrification, EV charging, heat pumps, batteries, and solar PV all changing load levels and operating patterns. A distribution network designed for predictable one-way flows has to manage local export, peak demand, flexible load, and protection settings across increasingly dynamic conditions.

Demand flexibility has moved from an efficiency measure into a system planning tool. Shifting consumption does not replace substations, transformers, or feeder upgrades, but it can reduce congestion, improve asset utilisation, and provide capacity while physical reinforcement is planned and delivered. Its value depends on visibility, reliable dispatch, measurement, cyber-secure communications, and integration with network control processes.

That operating layer is becoming a larger part of grid modernisation. Digitalisation and flexibility projects backed through Ofgem’s Strategic Innovation Fund are already moving in the same direction, with work spanning digital twins, local energy balancing, robotics, cyber resilience, and near-real-time operational visibility. Schneider Electric and Kraken are taking that direction into a commercial partnership built around deployed flexibility.

The technical challenge is not simply the availability of flexible assets. EVs, batteries, heat pumps, and controllable industrial loads are already appearing across the system. The harder task is turning fragmented assets into dependable network resources without compromising customer operations, battery health, local voltage quality, or protection coordination.

For DSOs, the platform layer has to connect planning, control-room operation, customer connections, market settlement, and asset data. A flexibility action only carries system value if it can be forecast, dispatched, verified, and reflected in network decisions. If that chain is weak, flexibility remains closer to a trial environment than an operational tool.

Data centre connection pressure adds further urgency. Large digital infrastructure loads can require substantial capacity in locations where available network headroom is already limited. Industrial electrification creates similar problems around process loads, hydrogen production, heat electrification, and high-power charging. Flexibility can support faster connection offers, but only where the load can be managed without undermining the site’s core operation.

Cybersecurity also becomes more demanding as more flexible control is introduced. Connected devices, remote commands, asset data, and control signals all increase the need for authentication, secure communications, and resilient system design. Distributed control has to be engineered for operational security as well as efficiency.

The partnership reflects a broader move away from treating grid constraints as problems solved only through copper, steel, and transformers. Physical reinforcement remains essential where thermal limits, fault levels, or ageing assets dictate investment, but forecasting, software-led control, and flexibility orchestration are now part of the same engineering toolkit.

The next phase will depend on whether utilities can operate these capabilities in live network environments with dependable dispatch, accurate measurement, and clear contractual arrangements. As electricity demand rises, the grid will need heavier infrastructure and sharper control of the loads already connected to it.