As Germany’s largest electricity grid operator, the energy transition poses major challenges for E.ON, but also great growth opportunities. The “connection boom” in the distribution grid in Germany is historically unique. Since 2020, the number of follow-up inquiries at E.ON has increased almost fivefold. Group-wide, more than half a million new connections to the E.ON distribution grid were realized in 2023. This corresponds to an increase of more than 50 percent compared to the previous year. In this article, you will learn about the importance of enterprise architecture and digitization in this context.

In view of these magnitudes, it becomes clear that the complexity of the energy transition cannot be solved by the expansion of grid infrastructure alone, but above all by digitalized and efficient grid control as well as by flexible control of renewable energy plants and electric cars.

In addition, the restructuring of the energy system is changing the fundamental consumer behaviour of customers and producers, who expect new digital products for energy efficiency and their networking.

The transformation to an “all-digital” company is therefore the logical consequence for E.ON and will thus become an essential part of its business strategy. For the E.ON Board of Management, Enterprise Architecture Management has become a tool for successfully shaping the digital transformation.

How E.ON is giving digitalization a new significance in the company

Hardly any other industry in Germany has changed as much in recent years as the energy industry. Europe needs a smart energy infrastructure for sustainable, secure and affordable energy. E.ON has responded to this and realigned the company. With a clear strategy, E.ON is focusing on three clear priorities: digitalization, sustainability and growth. Given the impact on the European energy market, E.ON is in a position to play a key role in shaping the decarbonization of our society like no other European energy company. We are investing massively to meet the rapidly growing demand for energy infrastructure.

The fact that decisions on digitalization are of fundamental importance for the value creation and long-term competitiveness of the E.ON Group is represented by a separate Board of Management department. This has been headed by Dr. Victoria Ossadnik for more than three years. This means that trend-setting architecture and IT issues are now being discussed and decided at board level.

Common Technology Platform. Source: E.ON

Modernization and rationalization of the application landscape

In the past, the IT organization focused on creating synergies and increasing efficiency. Modernizing the application landscape was a subordinate priority.

This has changed fundamentally as part of the digitization strategy with the introduction of the “Common Technology Platform” (CTP). This defines reference architectures and standards for the Group at all levels of value creation. On the basis of these references, all of the Group’s IT units develop target architectures and concrete plans for the modernization of systems and applications. The aim is to align the IT landscape of the respective business units with cost efficiency, agility, innovation and resilience.

E.ON is paying particular attention to the “cloudification” of the application landscape. Within two years, all applications were migrated to the cloud and E.ON’s 5 own data centers were closed. Although not all applications were optimized for operation in the cloud, benefits for E.ON’s business units in terms of availability, flexibility and cyber resilience have already been achieved after the “lift and shift”. In the next step, the applications are successively optimized with the help of the available cloud services.

Source: E.ON

As an operator of critical infrastructures, system availability is a key indicator by which IT at E.ON can be measured. Availability and significant disruptions to the IT landscape are explained to the Executive Board in quarterly reports. It quickly became apparent that operating in the cloud significantly increases availability due to the high degree of standardization and automation.

The modern infrastructure of cloud providers not only increases availability, but also improves cyber security by closing critical security gaps more quickly or solving them directly.

Automation through consistent standardization of data and systems

Due to varying degrees of regulation in the various EU markets, E.ON’s business is highly regionalized and is operated by independent companies with their own processes and systems. In order to achieve the ambitious EU climate targets in a uniform manner, processes must be standardised across the board in order to be able to manage the transformation of energy systems in the given time. However, standardization of processes is only possible through harmonization and consolidation of the applications and data used for this purpose. This is the only way to efficiently implement digitization and automation and achieve the necessary scaling and speed in grid expansion. Ultimately, standardization is also the prerequisite for the use of artificial intelligence (AI), which offers further opportunities for efficient digitalization.

To this end, key decisions regarding the business architecture and the common IT target landscapes have already been discussed and decided at board level.

Thanks to these decisions, the first digital and AI-supported solutions have already been implemented. One example of this is the use of a digital twin: With its help, connection requests, for example for photovoltaic systems or charging stations in the low-voltage grid, can be evaluated and processed much faster. This makes it possible to answer customer inquiries in real time. Even when a grid connection is specifically commissioned, the tool shortens the processing time from several days or weeks to just a few days.

“Make or Buy” decisions

For many years, it was sufficient for E.ON to buy software and have the IT infrastructure operated by external providers, as IT hardly served as a competitive advantage in the energy market. But it is now clear that the energy transition will not succeed without consistent digitalization. It is therefore strategically important for E.ON which digital solutions will be developed and operated in-house in the future, as they can open up new business areas and create competitive advantages. E.ON is therefore increasingly focusing on the development of its own software and products – either by its own software team or by acquiring IT companies.

One example of this is E.ON’s XENON platform, which networks and monitors various decentralized energy sources such as wallboxes, batteries or heat pumps. Specially developed hardware is used to connect the customers’ systems with E.ON’s Home Energy Platform in the cloud to make them individually controllable.

In addition to acquiring successful start-ups, E.ON also relies on a modern operating model for the operation and development of its own products. E.ON is currently converting its IT operating model to agile product teams and significantly expanding important core competencies such as software engineering. This applies not only to software development, but is also intended to support decision-making in enterprise architecture up to the board level.

IT and architecture expertise on the board

These examples show that enterprise architecture and strategic IT decisions must be understood or even made at the C-level level so that the potential of digitization can be fully realized. This is the only way E.ON can successfully meet increasing customer requirements and global competition. E.ON is pursuing the clear goal of adapting technological innovations such as artificial intelligence at an early stage and strategically integrating them in order to strengthen its own competitiveness.

The author

Markus Rink, Head of Technology and Engineering at E.ON Digital Technology, is responsible for digital strategy, enterprise architecture and software engineering at E.ON and has played a key role in shaping the company’s digital transformation in recent years. He has worked at E.ON for more than 20 years, where he has held various management positions in the Group’s IT and digital divisions.