What began as a cloud migration some ten years ago has since grown into a strategic partnership. NET2GRID and inQdo work together on the cloud infrastructure powering energy insights across Europe and North America. This allows NET2GRID to focus entirely on its mission: helping energy retailers accelerate the transition to sustainable energy through data-driven insights.
The energy transition is no longer a distant promise. Electric vehicles, heat pumps, solar panels and home batteries are turning consumers into what the energy sector calls 'prosumers': people who not only consume energy, but also generate, store and feed it back into the grid. For energy retailers, this represents a fundamental shift. They must not only supply their customers with energy, but understand them — their consumption patterns, their flexibility and their potential. "You need much deeper marketing knowledge of those customers," says Bert Lutje Berenbroek, founder and CEO of NET2GRID. "That requires smart analysis of distributed energy resources based on consumption data. That is precisely what NET2GRID EnergyAI® does for energy companies."
NET2GRID delivers energy insight services to the largest energy companies in Europe and North America, operating from offices in Zeist and Thessaloniki, Greece. By using AI-powered energy analytics, the company transforms raw data from tens of millions of smart meters into actionable insights for energy retailers: from personalised customer journeys and targeted marketing to grid planning. The latter is becoming increasingly important as electric vehicles, solar panels and home batteries place growing pressure on energy networks. Knowing how much power is being drawn behind a particular transformer means you can intervene before it overheats.
A fundamental shift
To deliver these insights, NET2GRID runs a complex AWS infrastructure with a dedicated, private cloud environment for each customer. Data security is paramount. "We believe it is important that data is stored locally and close to the end customer," says Lutje Berenbroek. Energy companies therefore always receive a fully private environment that is not shared with other customers, and they can choose the region of the data centre themselves. "If we have customers in Canada, the AWS data centre region must be Canada."
When NET2GRID entered into its partnership with inQdo in 2017, the company served thousands of smart meters. That number now runs into the tens of millions. This leap in scale could easily have driven AWS costs up proportionally — but that is not what happened. "AWS costs are, alongside staff costs, one of our biggest expenditures," says Lutje Berenbroek. "inQdo helps us keep those costs under control and drive them down." By bundling volumes and purchasing capacity over longer periods, costs are kept structurally lower. inQdo also works with AWS to identify when computing power is available at lower rates, and NET2GRID schedules its daily AI analyses precisely at those moments. "They have scaled enormously alongside us as a partner," says Lutje Berenbroek. "And they have helped us ensure that AWS costs did not scale linearly with our growth."
"Our experience shows that working with inQdo is more cost-effective than managing AWS ourselves, and the service we receive in return is of great value."
That growth accelerated further when NET2GRID decided to take over AWS contracting on behalf of its customers. Where customers previously managed their own AWS contracts, NET2GRID now acts as a one-stop shop. And where NET2GRID previously only purchased capacity through inQdo for its own development and test environments, the full commercial infrastructure for all customers now runs through that same channel. "That caused our business relationship with AWS — and therefore with inQdo — to 'scale rapidly," says Lutje Berenbroek. inQdo helped fully automate the private cloud environment set up for each customer, enabling the same AWS environment to be rolled out quickly and reliably for new clients. The cloud expert also provides ongoing support for managing and maintaining software versions across all those separate environments.
Knowledge from other domains
NET2GRID has a strong in-house technical team. The question is therefore not whether they know AWS, but when external expertise makes the difference. Lutje Berenbroek is matter-of-fact about it: inQdo is brought in when the internal team hits a wall, or when they feel they need outside knowledge. That may sound modest, but those moments are pivotal. NET2GRID recently redesigned a product built ten years ago from the ground up for a number of major customers. The sessions with inQdo were indispensable — they guided the architecture in the right direction. The value lies not only in deep technical knowledge, but in its breadth. "inQdo advises multiple AWS customers," says Lutje Berenbroek. "That means they can move quickly and draw on lessons learned in other domains. It sometimes leads to proposals our own team would not have thought of — and occasionally they flag things we had not even noticed ourselves."
That drive for innovation extends beyond the cloud. In North America, where the next generation of smart meters is already being rolled out, NET2GRID EnergyAI® software is now running directly on the device itself - inside the meter - rather than in the cloud.. "Our solution that normally runs in the AWS cloud can, in North America, be run on the next generation of smart meters inside the meter itself," says Lutje Berenbroek. "This allows us to manage the charging of electric vehicles in real time, or share solar panel output directly with the grid operator." This so-called edge AI makes it possible to relieve pressure on transformers before they overheat, and gives grid operators critical information when restarting the network after an outage. The Netherlands will follow in the coming years. All Dutch grid operators are currently working on the rollout of what they call the NextGen architecture: a new generation of smart meters that, like those in North America, allow software to run directly on the device. "NET2GRID EnergyAI® is already prepared for that," says Lutje Berenbroek. It will take around fifteen years before the whole of the Netherlands is equipped with these new meters, but NET2GRID is already ahead of the curve.
‘A strategic long-term partner also works with us to envision what the architecture will look like in five years’ time.’
That inQdo has grown alongside NET2GRID over all these years is precisely what distinguishes a migration partner from a strategic long-term partner. "The relationship with a migration partner ends when the migration is complete," says Lutje Berenbroek. "A long-term partner also thinks with us about what our architecture should look like in five years' time — and that is exactly what inQdo is for us." That forward thinking also takes concrete shape. Together with inQdo, NET2GRID is exploring how long-term contracts can contribute further to cost management and how energy companies as end customers can benefit as well. "As you scale, those AWS costs become increasingly significant," says Lutje Berenbroek. "Together with inQdo, we are looking at how to keep those costs manageable for our customers through longer contract terms."
For organisations that believe they can manage all of this on their own, Lutje Berenbroek has straightforward advice: ''Don't overestimate yourself; you often don't know what you don't know. In our experience, working with inQdo has proven to be more cost-effective than managing AWS ourselves, and the service we receive in return is of great value.''