Community energy management with FlexMeasures, fully scriptable
TL;DR: At FOSDEM 2026, Nicolas Höning presented how LF Energy FlexMeasures is expanding from single-site optimization to Community Energy Management Systems (CEMS). The approach allows individual homes, buildings, and business parks to optimize locally while a higher-level orchestration layer coordinates shared grid capacity, flexibility, and energy flows.
What is FlexMeasures?
FlexMeasures is an open source smart planning layer designed to optimize the use of flexible energy assets. Höning explained that these assets can include:
- Heat pumps
- Batteries
- Electric vehicles and charging systems
- Industrial processes
The goal is to help organizations add intelligent planning capabilities to existing energy services and infrastructure.
Built for Developers and Integrators
A key theme of the talk was that FlexMeasures is designed to be highly usable by developers. Höning highlighted tooling such as:
- APIs for integration into external systems
- CLI tools for automation
- Docker support for deployment
- A scriptable client for creating sites, assets, dashboards, and optimization workflows
This makes it possible to replicate successful site designs across dozens or hundreds of installations, or to run simulations at scale.
Why Community Energy Management Matters
The central focus of the session was extending optimization beyond individual sites to communities of multiple locations working together. These may include:
- Residential neighborhoods
- Homes and apartment buildings
- Business parks
- Commercial facilities
Höning cited the Netherlands as an example where grid connection limits are slowing electrification and business growth. In some areas, new developments or expanded grid connections may not be available for years.
By coordinating energy use collectively, communities can better use limited capacity, pool flexibility resources, and locally share renewable generation such as solar power.
Two Architectural Models for CEMS
Höning described two possible approaches to community energy management.
Central Fleet Optimization
In this model, all participating sites send forecasts, preferences, and asset data to a central optimizer, which creates one large coordinated plan for everyone.
Federated Coordination with Local Autonomy
The second model—and the one being tested with TNO in the Netherlands—allows each site to optimize itself first. A higher-level community layer then evaluates the aggregated schedules and requests adjustments if the combined plan would exceed shared limits.
This approach offers several benefits:
- Local autonomy: Each site keeps control over its own assets and preferences
- Flexible contracts: Sites may retain their own commercial arrangements
- Scalability: Smaller optimizations may scale better than one centralized system
Using Price and Capacity Signals
Rather than directly controlling local systems, the community layer influences behavior through signals:
- Price signals: Higher prices during peak periods encourage load shifting
- Capacity limits: If pricing alone does not solve the issue, sites can be given hard limits to stay within
This allows local systems to remain independent while still contributing to a community-wide objective.
Prototype Results
Höning presented early prototype results comparing uncoordinated and coordinated optimization.
Without the community layer, aggregated demand exceeded the shared network capacity limit. After applying community-level signals, local systems adjusted their schedules and brought the total load much closer to the allowed threshold.
He also noted that forecasting errors remain an operational challenge, since plans are only as accurate as the forecasts used to generate them.
Challenges Beyond Technology
While the technical prototype is promising, Höning emphasized that organizational challenges may be even more difficult than software design. For example, communities may need to:
- Adopt collective contracts
- Coordinate incentives among participants
- Agree on governance models
The Role of Open Source
The talk demonstrated how open source software can help solve emerging grid constraints by enabling new forms of energy coordination. As electrification accelerates, platforms like FlexMeasures can provide a flexible foundation for local optimization, community orchestration, and shared energy value creation.
