OPEN ENERGI LIMITED

Their core work

Open Energi is a UK technology SME that specialises in demand-side management — aggregating distributed energy assets such as batteries, heat storage, and EV infrastructure to deliver real-time grid balancing services. Their core product turns behind-the-meter flexibility into grid services, reducing energy costs for industrial clients while stabilising the electricity network. In H2020 projects they contributed as an industrial deployment partner, bringing live operational data and real-world grid integration experience rather than laboratory research. The rltec.com website (an earlier brand, RLTEC, meaning Real-Time Load Control) reflects their founding mission of automated, sub-second demand response at scale.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

In their first H2020 project (TILOS, 2015), Open Energi worked on stationary battery storage, distributed heat storage, and smart microgrid control — essentially applying their demand-response platform to isolated island energy systems. By their second project (H2ME 2, 2016), the focus moved to hydrogen fuel cell vehicles and high-utilisation grid balancing, showing a deliberate shift from fixed storage toward mobile and alternative energy carriers. The consistent thread is grid flexibility: they moved up the application stack from island microgrids toward pan-European hydrogen transport infrastructure while keeping demand-side intelligence at the centre.

Open Energi is moving from stationary storage and microgrid control toward hydrogen transport grid services, suggesting future collaboration potential in vehicle-to-grid, FCEV infrastructure, and cross-sector energy flexibility projects.

How they like to work

Open Energi has never led an H2020 project, consistently joining as a participant in large Innovation Action consortia. Both of their projects were multi-year, multi-country deployments with unusually large consortia, meaning they are comfortable operating inside complex, multi-partner structures without holding the coordination role. This positions them as an industrial validation partner — organisations that need a demand-response operator to prove real-world applicability should find them a practical fit.

Despite only two projects, Open Energi has built connections with 74 unique partners across 13 countries, indicating they joined very large pan-European consortia. Their network spans energy utilities, transport authorities, and technology developers across Western and Southern Europe.

What sets them apart

Open Energi occupies a rare position among UK H2020 participants: a commercially operating demand-response aggregator contributing live deployment data and real grid-service contracts rather than only research outputs. Most flexibility and storage partners in EU consortia are research institutes or large utilities — a lean UK SME with a proven automated load-control platform stands out as a practical industrial validator. Consortium builders working on energy storage, EV infrastructure, or hydrogen deployment who need a grid-flexibility operator with real customers should consider them before larger, slower institutional partners.

Highlights from their portfolio

• TILOS
  A flagship island-scale demonstrator combining battery and thermal storage with smart microgrid control, giving Open Energi direct experience in end-to-end energy system integration far beyond typical demand-response scope.
• H2ME 2
  One of the largest hydrogen mobility programmes in H2020, spanning multiple European countries and connecting fuel cell vehicle deployment with live grid balancing — the project where Open Energi's grid-flexibility expertise was applied to hydrogen infrastructure at scale.