Two exhibitions, one direction — but a world of difference in pace

The common ground: monitoring is the foundation

At both exhibitions, one message was unavoidable: you cannot optimize what you do not measure.

Whether it concerns an installer seeking control over a home with solar panels and an EV charger, or a grid operator aiming to unlock flexibility at neighborhood level — the connection point is where everything begins. The smart meter as the factual foundation of the energy system: that message resonated just as strongly in Utrecht as it did in Essen.

At Xemex, this has been the foundation of our work for years. Our Smart Connect P1 dongle, KWHIQ and CompactIQ meters provide exactly the data layer everything depends on.

The difference: execution versus infrastructure at scale

This is where the exhibitions diverge — and that difference is highly informative.

Solar Solutions primarily focused on installers, OEM manufacturers of batteries and PV systems, and EMS specialists. Conversations were centered around concrete projects: how do I integrate a heat pump into an EMS, how do I set up remote monitoring, how do I help a housing corporation prove its energy label targets? The questions are practical, and decision cycles are short.

E-world operates at a different level of aggregation. The focus lies on regulated infrastructure: the accelerated smart meter rollout in Germany, the Smart Meter Gateway as a certified communication hub, and the Steuerbox as a standardized control element for power management. Flexibility here is not a feature — it is an engineering and regulatory requirement.

Simply put: Solar Solutions is about what happens in homes today. E-world is about the infrastructure that must enable this at scale for millions of households in the next decade.

The installer’s perspective: simple and directly applicable

One striking observation at Solar Solutions was how concrete the installer’s demand is — and how deliberately they distance themselves from complex EMS solutions.

They are not looking for fully automated energy systems. They want insight into the combination of PV and heat pumps, and they want the ability to intervene: curtail solar production when needed. Curtailment — limiting feed-in — is gaining strong attention. Not as a complex optimization feature, but as a direct response to two concrete developments: the phase-out of net metering schemes and the increasing feed-in costs passed on to residential consumers by energy suppliers.

For many households, feeding electricity back into the grid has become financially unattractive — or soon will be. The logical response: maximize self-consumption and flatten peaks when demand is low. This does not require a full EMS — it requires reliable monitoring and targeted control.

This pattern was also visible at E-world. The functional simplification of EMS does not reduce its value — it enables scale. Not every household needs a fully automated system. But millions of households already have solar panels, and a growing share is adding heat pumps or EV chargers. These combinations — simple, yet widespread — represent the true volume of the energy transition.

For Xemex, this means lowering the threshold for valuable monitoring. The Smart Connect P1 dongle and our CompactIQ meters are designed exactly for this need: fast deployment, immediate insight, without requiring installers to invest in full EMS implementations. Those who want to scale towards asset management via Enny and, for example, a Lewiz EMS, can do so — but the first step does not need to be the final one.