The Next Battle in Energy Isn't About Electricity

Energy retailers have spent decades building their businesses around a relatively simple proposition: buy energy, sell energy, bill for consumption.

That model isn't disappearing. But it is no longer enough.

Electric vehicles are becoming batteries on wheels. Homes are turning into small energy ecosystems. Customers can shift consumption, generate electricity, store it and potentially sell it back to the grid.

Meanwhile, AI promises to optimize almost every part of the equation.

The opportunities are enormous. So is the risk.

What happens when the most valuable part of the energy relationship is no longer the electricity itself?

We've seen something similar in telecoms. Operators invested billions in networks, only to watch digital platforms capture an increasing share of the value created on top of that connectivity.

Could energy retailers be heading towards the same scenario?

It's a question worth asking.

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Everyone wants a piece of the energy customer

At the recent GAZELEC event in Paris, Mathieu Horn, CEO and Co-founder of triPica, joined a discussion about data, IT and AI in the energy sector.

One of the key takeaways from his perspective is how much the conversation has moved beyond traditional energy supply.

We're no longer talking only about forecasting demand or improving operational efficiency. We're talking about entirely new services and business models.

And energy retailers are no longer the only players interested in delivering them.

EV manufacturers, flexibility aggregators, technology platforms, equipment providers and AI specialists are all finding ways to interact with energy customers.

Some control devices. Others control the data. Others provide the intelligence that determines when and how energy should be consumed.

Not all of them need to be electricity suppliers to create value from that relationship.

The risk for retailers is not losing the ability to supply electricity. It's losing relevance in everything that happens around it.

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Data is not the business model

There's a lot of excitement around energy data. Understandably so.

Smart meters, connected devices and increasingly granular market signals offer opportunities to understand consumption and optimize energy usage.

But collecting more data doesn't automatically make a business more competitive.

And adding AI doesn't magically solve the problem.

Imagine an AI model that identifies the ideal moment to charge an electric vehicle.

Excellent.

Now what?

Can the retailer turn that recommendation into a personalized tariff? Can it reward the customer for shifting consumption? Can it integrate the result into the contract and billing process?

And can it do all of that without launching a two-year IT project?

An AI recommendation that cannot be executed is still just a recommendation.

The real opportunity lies in connecting intelligence to action.

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Flexibility is a product. Not just a grid requirement.

Flexibility is probably one of the clearest examples of this transformation.

The energy system needs consumers to become more responsive to supply and demand. But customers don't wake up thinking about grid balancing.

They think about convenience, savings and whether a service is worth their time.

If we want demand-side flexibility to scale, we need to make it commercially attractive and simple to use.

Take vehicle-to-grid technology.

An electric vehicle can consume electricity when conditions are favorable and return energy to the grid when it is needed.

That creates potential value for the grid, the retailer and the vehicle owner.

But who makes that value accessible to the customer?

Through our work with The Mobility House and its vehicle-to-grid offering, we've seen what it takes to make V2G a commercial reality.

Behind the technology, someone must manage the offer, the contract, the energy flows, the financial calculations and the customer relationship.

The Mobility House provides energy trading capabilities. triPica supports the customer management and billing layer that makes monetization possible.

That's where a technological capability becomes a service people can actually use.

And V2G is only one example.

Solar, batteries, heat pumps, dynamic tariffs and bundled services will create similar challenges.

The technology is advancing. The commercial systems need to keep up.

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The biggest bottleneck may be the retailer's own IT

Here's the uncomfortable part.

Many energy retailers have ambitious innovation roadmaps. But their commercial systems were designed for a much simpler world.

A customer. A contract. A meter. A bill.

Now imagine adding several commodities, time-dependent prices, electricity exported to the grid, flexibility rewards and services delivered by external partners.

Suddenly, that familiar billing process becomes considerably more complex.

The traditional response has often been to add another integration, another workaround or another layer of customization.

It works. Until it doesn't.

You cannot build tomorrow's energy business models on systems that struggle to launch today's offers.

This is why the customer and billing platform is becoming strategic infrastructure.

Not because billing itself is exciting.

But because almost every new energy service eventually needs to be offered, contracted, measured and monetized.

If your systems cannot support that process, innovation remains a pilot project.

Modernization is therefore about much more than replacing outdated technology. It's about giving suppliers the ability to adapt their business models as the market evolves, as illustrated by Gaz Européen's energy retail modernization initiative.

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So, who will own the customer relationship?

There's a growing debate about the role of digital platforms in the energy industry.

Will utilities develop their own technology ecosystems? Will specialized platforms become the industry's operating layer? Will Big Tech play a more influential role?

It's unlikely that one company will control the entire value chain.

Energy is too complex, too regulated and too interconnected for that.

But the balance of power will increasingly depend on who can turn all these capabilities into a coherent customer proposition.

And that's where energy retailers have an important choice to make.

They can remain primarily commodity suppliers, relying on other players to develop and manage the services that create differentiation.

Or they can become orchestrators of a broader customer relationship, integrating technologies and partners while retaining the ability to design, launch and monetize their own propositions.

That doesn't require owning every asset or building every piece of technology.

It requires something more practical: control over the commercial execution of the customer experience.

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AI won't save a business model that cannot evolve

AI will undoubtedly accelerate this transformation.

It can improve forecasting, personalize offers, support customer service and optimize decisions across increasingly complex energy ecosystems.

But we should be careful not to confuse technological sophistication with business value.

The real test isn't whether a supplier has deployed AI.

It's whether that AI helps deliver a better service, make a better decision or create a new source of value.

And as AI becomes more autonomous, reliability, transparency, governance and security become even more important.

Customers don't want to understand the complexity of the systems behind their energy services.

They want those services to work.

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The next energy winners won't necessarily sell more energy

For energy retailers, this transformation represents an opportunity rather than an inevitable threat.

They already have valuable customer relationships, market expertise and a central role in the energy ecosystem.

But they cannot assume those advantages will be enough.

At triPica, our focus has always been on enabling new business models through customer engagement and monetization. Not simply making existing processes faster, but making new services commercially possible.

We see that same need for adaptable commercial platforms as suppliers expand into new markets, including Primeo Energie's launch of energy retail operations in Italy.

Because the future of energy retail will not be defined by how many innovative ideas a company can demonstrate.

It will be defined by how many of those ideas it can bring to customers, reliably and at scale.

The winners won't necessarily be those with the most data, the most sophisticated AI or the largest technology budgets.

They will be those who can turn intelligence into action, and action into customer value.

The question for energy retailers is simple:

Will you own that relationship, or will you become the infrastructure behind someone else's customer experience?

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