Alarm bells are ringing across Europe. In March, Europe’s largest airport, Heathrow, was shut down, and Spain and Portugal lost power in April. These are not isolated incidents but symptoms of a more profound vulnerability inherent in our increasingly centralised energy systems. The echoes of these alarm bells should serve as a lesson: we need a fundamental change in how we think about and build our energy security for the future.
We’ve relied on this model for ages: big power plants, sending electricity over vast distances through complex transmission lines. And look, it works, at least most of the time, it does. But this model, for all its efficiency in regular times, creates single points of failure. One fire, one bad storm, or, heaven forbid, something more malicious, and the whole thing can just… domino. The cascading effects can be catastrophic.
Thinking about Heathrow, that chaos was due to a pretty localised blackout, but it rippled outwards, disrupting air traffic everywhere. And the Iberian Peninsula? That was a broader network issue, just paralysis. Millions of lives thrown into disarray, vital services cut off, transport grinding to a halt. It drives home this critical, uncomfortable truth: relying only on the traditional, centralised grid doesn’t cut it anymore. Not in a world grappling with accelerating climate change and an increasingly unstable geopolitical situation.
This is precisely where, it seems to me, distributed energy – both generating it and storing it – becomes not just important, but essential. Picture this: instead of everything depending on that one distant, big power source, what if homes, businesses, and critical infrastructure were all supported by something more local? Think about local generation – solar panels on rooftops, perhaps a community wind turbine. And critically, local ways to store that energy right there.
This is the heart of distributed energy – having smaller-scale power sources and placing storage solutions like batteries, yes, but also critically, hydrogen and other technologies, right near where the energy is used. So, how does this help when the grid inevitably faces those challenges we’ve been seeing?
First, having distributed power generation and storage gives you an immediate backup. If the main grid goes down, your local generation can keep running, and your local storage kicks in instantly. Lights stay on, phone lines still work, and essential medicines stay refrigerated. It stops that immediate freefall into chaos and, just as importantly, buys grid operators precious time to figure out what went wrong and fix it.
Beyond just backup, distributed storage helps the grid itself, even when it is working. It can soak up excess power when a lot is generated (think a sunny, windy day) and release it when everyone needs power at once (peak hours!). These systems act like buffers, or maybe shock absorbers is a better way to put it, evening things out and preventing the kind of instability – voltage drops or overloads – that can trigger widespread outages. And don’t forget, distributed generation lightens the load on those long, vulnerable transmission lines.
And as we bring more renewables online – and we have to – sources like solar and wind that aren’t always available, distributed generation and storage become non-negotiable, absolutely vital. We need to capture that clean energy when it’s there. And this is where hydrogen shines. Hydrogen, especially when we produce it using renewable electricity through electrolysis, is one of the key ways to store large amounts of power for extended periods. You can store it and convert it to electricity with fuel cells when needed, even seasonally. That capability is a huge step towards true energy independence.
Embracing distributed power generation alongside storage is a fundamental necessity for our energy security.
We need a focused effort to stop these disruptive events from becoming more frequent. We need to accelerate getting distributed energy systems – generation and storage – deployed faster.
This means a few things, I think:
Policies need to be supportive. We need incentives, like investment subsidies for really critical areas like telecommunications. Regulations must make connecting local generation and storage to the grid easier, not harder. The grid needs modernization to handle this new, more decentralized power flow.
Driving investment in innovation—often through startups—is crucial to significantly improve the cost-effectiveness and performance of distributed energy technologies. This means dedicated research and development to lower upfront installation costs, reduce ongoing operational and maintenance expenses, and ultimately make these solutions more economically viable for wider adoption.
Simultaneously, innovation must focus on enhancing performance aspects such as energy conversion efficiency, ensuring less energy is lost during storage and retrieval, increasing the lifespan of equipment, and improving the reliability and speed at which these systems can respond to grid needs.
Startups play a vital role here, often bringing agility and focused expertise to tackle specific technological challenges. For hydrogen solutions specifically, this is particularly vital; innovation is needed to bring down the cost of producing green hydrogen through electrolysis, develop more efficient and cost-effective storage methods, and improve the performance and durability of fuel cells that convert hydrogen back into electricity.
A significant sign of the times illustrating this collaborative innovation is PowerUP’s recent participation in a consortium awarded a €40 million grant from the European Defence Fund. This initiative sees innovative smaller players like PowerUP working alongside industry heavyweights such as Rheinmetall, Leonardo, and Thales to develop advanced energy resilience solutions specifically for military camps, showcasing how cutting-edge energy technology is becoming critical even for defence infrastructure.
Without sustained investment and collaboration across the ecosystem, overcoming the current technical and economic hurdles will be challenging, limiting the full potential of hydrogen as a key enabler for long-duration power storage in distributed systems.
Cooperation is key. Energy companies, tech firms, policymakers, and urban planners need to work together. Joint projects, pilot programs, and integrating distributed systems into how we plan our infrastructure. We’re getting there, but maybe not fast enough sometimes.
And awareness! People need to understand this. Businesses and homeowners need to see the benefits and how practical these solutions are. Information campaigns, showing people how it works. Growing interest in storage solutions among European homes and businesses is a hopeful sign for building a more resilient future together.
Those blackouts at Heathrow, Spain, and Portugal weren’t just technical issues. They were loud, clear calls to action. They show us we can’t stick with this fragile, centralised system alone. We have to build something more resilient, a distributed energy future.
Distributed power generation, especially distributed energy storage – with hydrogen poised to play a significant long-term role – isn’t just an add-on technology. It feels like the absolute core building block of this new energy world we need to create. It’s a vital investment in how secure we all are and our collective well-being.
We really shouldn’t wait for the next time the lights go out. The time to act is, without question, now.
Ivar Kruusenberg, PhD, a serial entrepreneur, is a founder and Chief Executive of PowerUP Energy Technologies. He holds a PhD in chemistry focused on fuel cells from the University of Tartu, with post-doctoral work at UC Berkeley, and possesses nearly two decades of experience in the field. Dr. Kruusenberg works closely with governments on hydrogen strategy development and previously founded the successful scaleup UP Catalyst. His company, PowerUP Energy Technologies, founded in 2016, innovates in hydrogen fuel cell technology. Before his work in deep tech, Ivar was an Estonian national snowboarding champion.
