Why we invested in Tibo Energy
We are excited to welcome Tibo Energy to the KOMPAS VC family as the lead investor in their €6.0 million Seed round. Tibo’s mission is to unlock energy capacity from increasingly congested grid connections. This challenge is now one of the most pressing barriers to economic growth and decarbonisation across Europe and beyond.
Grid Congestion: The Growing Bottleneck
Grid congestion arises when the electricity grid cannot transmit enough power to meet demand, especially during peak hours. The rise of decentralised energy sources such as rooftop solar and local wind increasingly drives this bottleneck. These energy sources feed unpredictable power surges back into the grid, straining infrastructure built decades ago for one-way flows from centralised plants to passive consumers.
The growing uptake of heat pumps and EV chargers further intensifies the pressure. In parts of the Netherlands, for instance, residential areas have experienced transformer overloads simply from a handful of households installing EV chargers and heat pumps — leading to delays in new connections or outright restrictions on energy usage.
This is not a localised issue. Across Europe, ageing grid infrastructure is faltering under the weight of modern energy demands. A recent report from the UK’s National Grid noted that some parts of the network still rely on equipment from the 1950s and 60s — starkly illustrating how ill-prepared the system is for today's decentralised, dynamic energy flows.
Economic Impact: Delays, Costs and Missed Opportunities
The consequences of grid congestion are far-reaching. In Amsterdam, housing developments have stalled due to insufficient grid capacity. In rural Germany, small solar installations are routinely curtailed at peak generation hours. Northern Europe’s green hydrogen projects report bottlenecks that prevent scaling.
Many businesses face costly constraints. Some pause expansion, abandon low-carbon investments, or limit production to avoid steep penalties for breaching grid limits. Grid congestion inflates energy prices and undermines supply reliability — heightening the risk of blackouts during peak demand periods, whether from heatwaves or cold snaps.
Perhaps most critically, grid congestion slows the clean energy transition. In sun-drenched southern Spain, renewable generation is plentiful —yet without adequate transmission to the north, this clean power goes underutilised.
Traditional Infrastructure Investment Won’t Move Fast Enough
Governments and grid operators recognise the challenge. Dutch operator TenneT, for example, plans to invest €90 billion in the coming decade in new lines, offshore wind links, and infrastructure upgrades. The Dutch government’s financial guarantees reflect the urgency of the task. But infrastructure buildouts take years and Businesses cannot afford to wait.
In response, many are pursuing greater independence from the central grid through on-site generation, battery storage, and smart energy management. At BMW’s Leipzig plant, for example, wind turbines and battery storage now help stabilise energy supply — a model increasingly being replicated by other industrial players.
From Fragmented Assets to Integrated Energy Systems
However, many companies have historically installed energy assets in isolation. A logistics firm may have added rooftop solar in one year, then EV chargers in the next — with no consideration of the cumulative grid load. This fragmented approach was shaped by siloed incentives: solar feed-in tariffs on one hand, tax breaks for electric fleets on the other.
Yet integration is now mission-critical. In Belgium, businesses are fined for feeding surplus solar energy into the grid during overproduction. In Germany, industrial parks face hard caps on total energy draw, with penalties for exceeding thresholds. In Sweden, erratic load patterns that destabilise the grid can trigger fines. Even as some penalties face legal challenges, the message is clear: grid capacity is becoming scarce, and optimising its use is essential.
A Platform for the Future of Energy
Tibo Energy empowers businesses to plan, simulate, and operate integrated energy systems that respect grid constraints, optimise costs, and accelerate decarbonisation. Its hardware-independent and AI-driven software platform delivers flexibility, control, and insight in one solution.
Tibo offers two key products: an energy system simulator to developintegrated energy systems and an energy management system (EMS).
The energy simulator enables sales partners and customers to create and compare different energy system configurations for a specific site — a building, factory, or logistics hub. Users can assess how adding assets (e.g.,solar panels, EV chargers, batteries) will affect their grid connection, and choose a configuration that remains within capacity limits. The simulator provides transparency on energy costs, CO₂ emissions, and production/consumption profiles.
Once deployed, Tibo’s energy management system continuously manages energy flows in real-time, automatically shifting loads, coordinating assets, and avoiding costly grid overages. It ensures the energy system operates within contractual constraints while responding dynamically to external variables such as electricity prices, weather forecasts, or consumption spikes.
Both products are powered by Alice, Tibo’s proprietary AI engine.What sets Alice apart is its foundation in microeconomic theory. It models energy behaviour as if the system were a rational market: balancing supply and demand, optimising marginal costs and benefits, and responding to price signals. Alice acts as an intelligent economic agent — managing trade-offs, prioritising actions based on utility, and ensuring optimal system performance at every moment. This level of sophistication is rare in energy management. It allows Tibo to deliver cost-effective, scalable, and grid-compliant solutions tailored to virtually any site, asset mix, or customer objective.
Tibo’s value proposition becomes increasingly urgent as grid penalties rise, capacity gets auctioned like a commodity, and companies seek to build energy resilience. Whether navigating a constrained industrial park inGermany or a fast-growing logistics hub in the Netherlands, Tibo’s platform gives businesses the clarity and control they need to stay ahead. Unlike manyEMS providers, which are tied to specific hardware or narrowly focused on monitoring rather than control, Tibo offers a truly integrated, future-proof platform that solves a systemic problem, not just a technical one.
At KOMPAS VC, we back founders tackling fundamental challenges ofindustrial decarbonisation. Grid congestion is one of the most urgent andunderestimated barriers to progress. Tibo’s elegant, flexible, and intelligentsolution has the potential to redefine how businesses think about energyplanning and operation. We are proud to support the terrific team at Tibo Energy, led by CEORemco Eikhout, alongside our co-investors, Hitachi Ventures, SET Ventures,Speedinvest, and Wepa, as the company expands across Europe and beyond.
For more on how Tibo Energy unlocks the grid, visit https://tibo.energy.
