Record Breaking Attendance at LF Energy Summit Europe Drives Open Source Collaboration for the Energy Transition
LF Energy Summit Europe came to Germany for the first time, taking place 10-11 September 2025 in Aachen. The event hosted a record-breaking crowd of 365 stakeholders – a nearly 50% increase from 2024 – from across electric utilities, technology vendors, policy makers, global energy companies, researchers, and more. The event featured over 100 sessions to choose from, including keynotes, breakouts, lightning talks, live demos, working group and project meetups, and interactive workshops.
Videos of all sessions, photos of the summit, and slides from many sessions are now available freely and openly. To view slides, please select the session within the schedule; if the presenter provided their slides, they will be available to download from within the session description.
As always, the summit was emceed by LF Energy Executive Director Alex Thornton, who also gave an overview of LF Energy to the packed keynote audience.
The keynotes on day one offer a series of dynamic presentations showcasing how open source is reshaping the energy sector. Dr. Christian Hille of Accenture and Professor Antonello Monti of RWTH Aachen University set the stage by highlighting how software is becoming the backbone of modern energy infrastructure. This was followed by Hitachi Energy’s Jonny Eriksson and GlobalLogic’s Renan Giovanini, who explored how utilities can embed open source into innovation strategies to accelerate transformation. A keynote panel then turned to the expanding OpenSynth ecosystem, with leaders from Hydro-Québec, CRESYM, Delft University of Technology, and the Centre for Net Zero discussing the critical role of open data and AI in advancing power systems modeling. Closing the morning, GE Vernova’s Minh Dupuis outlined how open source projects like TROLIE and LEP, alongside GridOS®, are driving commercial-ready solutions to enable grid transformation at scale.
The day continued with a wealth of educational content and demos. Key topic areas of sessions included Data & AI, Digital Strategy & Security, Grid Automation, Grid Edge, and Simulation & Modeling. Attendees enjoyed multiple networking opportunities throughout the day included scheduled networking breaks, catered lunch, and an evening reception sponsored by Hitachi.
Day two continued with another round of thought-provoking keynote sessions on collaboration and innovation across the energy sector. The morning began with a keynote panel featuring leaders from Radia Capital, 50Hertz, Swissgrid, and RTE, who shared utility perspectives on the cultural and organizational shifts needed to embrace open digital collaboration. Marco Möller of Pionix then charted the journey of the LF Energy-hosted EVerest project, illustrating how a global open source community for EV charging infrastructure was built from vision to widespread adoption. Rounding out the keynotes, Alliander’s Tony Xiang and Jonas van den Bogaard reflected on their experience taking the LF Energy Power Grid Model project from prototype to innersource and ultimately to open source, offering valuable lessons on scaling innovation within and beyond the enterprise.
A number of interactive workshops were offered at the event, including a well-attended workshop moderated by Savannah Goodman of Google the delved into using Gen AI for grid planning. Other workshops focused on power system modeling and simulation, as well as specific LF Energy project communities.
LF Energy projects were provided the opportunity to book time at live demo stations, set up in public areas of the summit venue, to demonstrate actual operation of these projects in simulated environments. These demo stations proved to be popular with a dozen projects demoing their technologies throughout the event.
Additional networking opportunities took place on the second day, providing interactive opportunities to not only learn, but also to grow communities.
The opportunity to gather in person is always a way to accelerate innovation and collaboration. Although LF Energy project communities meet regularly virtually, the ability to know someone live can be extremely powerful and spur new ideas. Many attendees reported that their projects have already gained new contributors, potential end users, and just generally ideas for improvement thanks to the summit.
LF Energy also thanks our Diamond Sponsor Accenture, Platinum Sponsors Google, INESC TEC, and Soptim, Gold Sponsors Ecophi and Hitachi, and Silver Sponsor Savoir-faire Linux for making this event possible.
The LF Energy team and community will be gathering again next week in Montreal for the first-ever LF Energy Summit North America. We look forward not only to that, but to the year ahead as we continue to grow, with new members, new deployments, new projects, and more contributions. Learn more about how you can get involved.
