Setting up an energy hub on a business park: where to start

Your business wants to grow, electrify and invest in solar panels, batteries and chargers. But the grid operator says: hold on. Months, sometimes years. On more and more business parks, the grid is simply full. An energy hub is the answer. Instead of waiting for a grid upgrade, you share the capacity that’s already there with neighbouring businesses. Controlled, coordinated and profitable.

What exactly is an energy hub on a business park, why is now the time to start, and what concrete steps do you need to take?

Grid congestion is locking business parks out of growth, and waiting for upgrades takes years. An energy hub offers a way forward, but only if you get the steps right.

• Not every business peaks at the same time. Overlaying profiles lets you use the same connection tens of percentage points more efficiently.
• Capacity tariffs are rising. The higher your combined peak, the more you pay in fixed costs. A hub shaves those peaks collectively.
• Without a central energy management system, solar panels, batteries and chargers are expensive idle metal. The difference in returns easily runs into tens of percentage points.
• Treating the legal structure as an afterthought is the biggest pitfall. If the technology is ready but the agreements aren’t, your hub stalls.
• Always simulate before you invest. A scenario-based simulation on real energy profiles shows payback periods, savings and CO₂ impact before you commit.

The business parks starting now gain capacity without waiting for the grid operator. Those that hold off pay the premium for a connection that could already have been working harder.

What is an energy hub on a business park?

An energy hub on a business park is a local energy system where multiple businesses generate, store, use and exchange energy together. Typically behind a single shared connection or through coordinated agreements. The hub combines generation (solar panels, sometimes wind), storage (batteries), charging infrastructure and flexible consumers into one system.

The logic is straightforward: not every business peaks at the same time. Logistics charges in the evening, manufacturing runs during the day, offices peak around lunchtime. Overlay those profiles and you use existing capacity far more efficiently. What one business doesn’t need goes to the neighbour. What’s left over goes into storage.

The result: more headroom on the same connection, less dependence on grid upgrades and lower energy costs for everyone involved.

Why start an energy hub on your business park now?

Three developments are making the business case stronger than ever:

The upshot: waiting for the grid operator is no longer a strategy. Taking control is.

Five steps to a working energy hub

1. Map the energy profile of the site

Start with data. Collect consumption and generation figures from all participating businesses, ideally at quarter-hour resolution. Look at peak moments, simultaneity and how demand spreads across the day. This is where the opportunity becomes visible: businesses with opposite profiles complement each other.

Key questions at this stage:

• How large is the combined peak compared to the individual peaks?
• Which parties have spare capacity on their connection?
• Which parties are constrained and looking to expand?

2. Explore collaboration and legal structure

An energy hub runs on agreements. Who invests in which assets? Who shares in the returns? What legal form suits the site: a cooperative, a dedicated energy hub entity or a cable pooling arrangement?

Involve the park manager, an energy lawyer and the grid operator early. The sooner the legal structure is in place, the faster you can move on technology and financing.

3. Define the technical setup

Based on the energy profile and the ambitions, you design the physical hub. Think of: solar panels on rooftops and car parks, connected to the shared grid connection. Battery storage (BESS) to shave peaks and store cheap electricity for expensive hours. Smart charging infrastructure for company vehicles and visitors, with charge management that respects available capacity. A shared or pooled connection where legally and technically feasible.

The hardware is the skeleton. The real work happens in the software that controls it all.

4. Choose an Energy Management System that runs everything

This is where most energy hubs stall. You need a central brain making real-time decisions: store or dispatch, charge or defer, buy or sell. Without that system, all those assets are expensive idle metal.

A good Energy Management System (EMS):

• Controls solar panels, batteries, chargers and flexible installations as one coordinated system.
• Factors in dynamic energy prices, contract limits and weather forecasts.
• Prevents the connection capacity from being exceeded (peak shaving).
• Gives each participant visibility into their own consumption and contribution to the hub.

5. Simulate before you invest

Investing in batteries, solar panels and chargers quickly runs into hundreds of thousands of euros. Before the first spade hits the ground, you want to know: what does it deliver and how quickly does it pay back?

A simulation based on the actual energy profile shows, per scenario, what the savings, payback period and CO₂ impact look like. That way you avoid oversized batteries, undersized connections or wrong assumptions about dynamic pricing.

Common mistakes when setting up an energy hub

The biggest pitfalls we see in practice:

Tibo EMS: the brain behind a working energy hub

An energy hub stands or falls with the software that ties everything together. Tibo EMS is built for that job. Our platform controls solar panels, batteries, chargers and flexible consumers as one coordinated system, across a single site or an entire business park.

Under the bonnet, Alice, our algorithm, recalculates a 48-hour control schedule every five minutes. Based on energy prices, weather forecasts, consumption patterns and connection limits, Alice automatically makes the best decision per asset. The result on energy-intensive sites: up to 60% lower energy costs and up to 50% less CO₂.

Tibo EMS is hardware-agnostic and connects to existing systems. Whether you start with a single business or scale up an entire site from day one, the system grows with you. And before you invest, we simulate the hub based on your own data, so you have the business case in black and white before you decide.

Ready to take your energy hub from paper to reality?

Request a free simulation. We’ll run the numbers based on your business park’s energy profile and show you exactly what an energy hub delivers: how much capacity you free up, how much you save and how quickly your investment pays back.