Pure Energie selects Kraken for asset optimisation

Pure Energie has selected Kraken to manage and optimise its consumer load, wind, solar, and battery portfolio across the Netherlands through a single operating platform.

The system will bring together grid-scale assets and consumer demand, allowing Pure Energie to coordinate generation, storage, and load as an integrated portfolio. The partnership includes retail balancing, day-ahead curtailment, intraday trading, imbalance optimisation, ancillary market access, advanced data services, and operational alerts.

Twenty sites are planned for onboarding in the first half of 2026, with further expansion expected. Kraken has integrated with Dutch transmission system operator TenneT, as well as Pure Energie’s existing technology, to support secure market access in the Netherlands and across Kraken’s wider operating footprint.

The deployment comes as the Netherlands faces rising grid congestion and increasing volatility from wind, solar, and battery capacity. Coordinating generation and storage with customer demand can reduce imbalance exposure, support grid operation, and improve the commercial performance of flexible assets.

The energy system is moving away from managing individual assets in isolation. A wind farm, solar park, battery, and customer portfolio each have different operating characteristics, but their combined value depends on how they are forecast, dispatched, curtailed, traded, and measured across markets. Software is increasingly becoming the control layer that determines how physical assets interact with the grid.

For renewable-heavy systems, curtailment and imbalance management are growing operational challenges. Wind and solar output can move sharply with weather conditions, while demand changes by time of day, season, and industrial activity. Batteries can absorb or release power quickly, but only where forecasting, telemetry, market access, and dispatch controls are aligned. Customer load can also provide flexibility where it is visible and controllable within operational constraints.

IN Power recently covered Sungrow and Frank Energie’s work on virtual power plant aggregation across the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg. That project focused on distributed residential PV and storage, while the Pure Energie and Kraken arrangement brings together a broader portfolio including consumer load, wind, solar, and batteries. Both developments show the growing role of programmable energy assets in European power markets.

The Netherlands is an active market for this shift because distributed generation, congestion, retail innovation, and battery deployment are advancing quickly. As more assets connect to the system, coordination becomes more valuable. Without coordination, simultaneous export, charging, discharge, or curtailment can intensify local constraints or reduce asset value. With reliable coordination, the same assets can support balancing and reduce stress on the grid.

Digitalisation is moving from an efficiency tool to an operational requirement. Asset owners and utilities need systems that can collect data, forecast output, assess market signals, dispatch assets, settle performance, and maintain cybersecurity. The physical performance of batteries, turbines, inverters, and meters remains essential, but the operating system increasingly determines whether that performance can be monetised or used for grid support.

The partnership also reflects the changing role of customer load. Demand is no longer only the endpoint of the electricity system. Flexible consumption can be scheduled, shifted, reduced, or increased in response to prices and network needs where commercial arrangements and technical controls allow it. Combining load with generation and storage creates a larger optimisation task, while increasing the pool of controllable capacity.

IN Power has also covered work in Britain on a common flexibility dispatch standard, which shows the same trend from another angle. As flexibility markets grow, interoperability, dispatch signals, data exchange, and verification standards become essential to market operation.

Pure Energie’s deployment of Kraken adds another example of European energy companies treating digital control as core infrastructure. Wind, solar, batteries, and demand gain additional value when they can operate together, respond to market conditions, and provide measurable flexibility to a grid under pressure.

Further information is available through Kraken.