Energy sharing is emerging as one of the most powerful levers for utilities to stabilize PV revenues, engage customers, and navigate increasingly volatile electricity markets.
At the exnaton CONFERENCE 2025, Thies Stillahn, Senior Sales Manager at exnaton, delivered one of the most comprehensive walkthroughs of how energy sharing is shaping up to transform the energy landscape across the DACH region.
In this article, we break down the key insights from his talk — including the market drivers, regulatory developments, concrete models, and what utilities need in order to scale energy sharing successfully.
The starting point is clear: negative wholesale electricity prices are rising sharply across Europe.
This puts pressure on utilities and PV owners to find new revenue-stable, market-fit models. (Source: enervis. Renewables Power Market Report 2025 update)
Energy sharing offers exactly that. It enables:
Energy sharing refers to a group of producers and consumers who generate and use electricity together — not within a single building, but via the public grid.
Key characteristics:
Energy sharing is, at its core, a new category of an electricity product — one that can be combined with:
Austria is the frontrunner:
Upcoming: provide access for industrial customers at the local level, Peer-to-peer models enabling even smaller, highly scalable micro-communities.
Switzerland has officially adopted energy sharing as part of its revised electricity law:
This marks a shift in Switzerland’s historically monopoly-based electricity landscape.
After a lengthy legislative process, the Bundestag and Bundesrat approved the introduction of EnergySharing in November 2025. With the new Section 42c of the Energy Industry Act (EnWG), a legal framework is being created for the first time that enables the shared use of renewable electricity via the public grid., Here, Germany introduces a partial supply model that also gives market access to actors who have not previously been electricity suppliers:
Utilities across Europe are pioneering energy-sharing innovations by adopting various community-centric models that empower consumers, producers, and local stakeholders. These approaches demonstrate practical pathways for scaling energy sharing today:
In this model, the retailer of the utility supplies electricity to customers and simultaneously manages internal community energy sharing and the settlement process with local producers. With regard to direct marketing, the retailer purchases the surplus PV electricity—essentially like a micro-PPA—and compensates the plant operator both for the amount of electricity supplied to the community and for the amount sold on the electricity market or elsewhere. This centralized coordination ensures efficient balancing while enabling shared benefits for all participants.
This model is particularly attractive for industrial customers with multiple sites who either generate their own electricity or wish to purchase electricity directly from a producer through a PPA contract. When these companies generate electricity on, for example, the rooftops of their branches, a significant surplus often remains. This surplus would increasingly be sold on the electricity market without remuneration. At the same time, the company’s other sites without PV installations purchase electricity from the market at high prices.
This creates an attractive opportunity to distribute surplus electricity from PV-equipped sites to sites without PV. Depending on the consumption volume, this can lead to significant cost savings. At present, this is likely the most attractive use case for energy sharing.
Regional utilities implement virtual balancing for municipal consumers and producers within a balancing group model.. For example, PV energy generated at a town hall can directly supply nearby public facilities such as kindergartens or public swimming pools, fostering local renewable energy use with transparent governance. This model is also a variant of direct marketing for PV electricity and simultaneously enables municipal participants to increase their independence and reduce electricity procurement costs.
Regional tariffs are designed around locally produced wind and solar power, creating branded electricity offerings. These tariffs promote citizen participation by linking local renewable projects to recognizable, community-focused energy products. Today, local citizen electricity tariffs already exist in municipalities and small towns. However, these products are mostly still offered as flat-rate tariffs and are billed using standard load profiles. In this context, these can be seen as citizen electricity tariffs 2.0, which—based on smart meter data—are balanced every fifteen minutes and can therefore be implemented much more accurately to the benefit of the local energy system. Transparency for citizens increases significantly, thereby also enhancing the potential for load-shifting.
Residents may lease or invest in parts of renewable energy plants and receive electricity proportionate to their stake. This model deepens local ownership and engagement, transforming consumers into prosumers benefiting directly from the energy they help create.
Small-scale setups in families, neighborhoods or anywhere else use digital platforms to facilitate direct energy exchange. P2P schemes empower local actors to buy, sell, or share electricity with minimal intermediaries, promoting grassroots energy democratization.
It is also possible to structure these models hierarchically, for example by allowing consumers to be supplied preferentially by producer 1 and, if this PV unit does not generate sufficient electricity, to be supplied secondarily by producer 2. In this setup, the utility again acts as the purchaser of the directly marketed electricity and as the supplier to the participants. If consumers wish to change their producer, they can do so at any time—for instance via a map through which they can select their preferred producer. A so-called market place. A switching process within the energy market communication framework is not required. This makes the scalability of these models particularly attractive for utilities.
These diverse utility-led models exemplify early success in energy sharing, showcasing how collaboration between utilities, public entities, consumers, producers and technology providers can unlock new value chains in the energy transition. As regulatory frameworks mature and smart metering infrastructure spreads, such models will serve as scalable blueprints for replicating energy-sharing ecosystems across Europe.
Energy sharing can combine multiple opportunities to create value:
This allows utilities to offer high-autarky, flexible, transparent products that consumers understand and love.
Ultimately, energy sharing is always a type of electricity tariff. The participants aim to achieve the highest possible degree of self-sufficiency within the public electricity grid. A look at the load profiles of electricity producers and consumers illustrates this very clearly. As an example, we have mapped this for an energy sharing community with PV and wind power plants.
The load profile is shown on the left-hand side of the image: green represents electricity consumption and yellow represents electricity generation. This example clearly shows that a large share of consumption is covered by local generation. However, there are also times when the electricity supplier must provide residual electricity. This raises the question of how such a setup can be tariffed.
One option is a tariff with two price levels, as shown in the middle image. This corresponds to a time-variable tariff. In this example, the price is lower when the community is supplied by its own generation assets and correspondingly higher for residual electricity.
Another option (shown on the right) is a dynamic community price. Here, the price fluctuates depending on the community’s generation surplus but does not exceed the residual electricity price (price cap). Additionally, a minimum price for producers can be ensured. This protects the interests of both producers and consumers within the community.
exnaton’s intelligence platform enables utilities to implement any energy sharing variant:
Scaling energy sharing across Europe requires more than enthusiasm—it demands a practical, system-wide effort to make participation seamless for all consumers and producers. As Thies emphasized, five key success factors will determine whether energy sharing can move from pilots to mainstream adoption.
Broad smart meter coverage is foundational. Without real-time consumption and production data, balancing local energy exchanges becomes inefficient. Extending smart metering infrastructure beyond large users to include households and small businesses ensures transparency and accurate billing for all participants.
Joining an energy-sharing initiative should be as easy as signing up for a regular electricity contract. Simplified digital processes and clear communication can remove the friction that often discourages potential participants, especially non-technical users.
Energy sharing will only scale if it makes economic sense. Pricing must be competitive for consumers while remaining fair and rewarding for producers. This balance can help communities see tangible benefits from collective energy generation, reinforcing engagement and loyalty. Above all, the direct marketing of PV systems needs to become more cost-effective in this context
While smart meters continue to roll out, temporary models—such as billing through standard load profiles—can help bridge the gap. These pragmatic approaches allow early participation without waiting for complete infrastructure deployment.
Bureaucracy should not stifle innovation. Regulations need to be streamlined, transparent, and designed around user experience to encourage new entrants and community-scale energy sharing projects. A simple framework invites participation rather than restricting it.
Achieving these five elements will make energy sharing not just feasible but an integral part of Europe’s clean energy system—empowering citizens to produce, share, and consume energy together.
The rise of negative prices caused especially by PV in summertime, the expansion of renewables, and consumer demand for transparency all point to the same conclusion:
Energy sharing will become a mainstream electricity product in Europe.
It offers:
Utilities that invest now — in infrastructure, processes, and the right digital tools — will define the next decade of energy innovation.
exnaton helps utilities implement energy communities, peer-to-peer models, dynamic tariffs, and flexibility products — fast, compliant, and customer-friendly. Get in touch with our team.
