Berlin – September 07, 2026 -- Energy resilience has moved from a utility-sector concern to a boardroom priority across Europe as AI data centers and electric vehicle demand strain national grids, according to executives who joined an Economist Enterprise panel ahead of IFA Berlin 2026.
EcoFlow leverages 10 million deployed devices to target commercial energy markets
EcoFlow, which has deployed more than 10 million devices and serves 5 million users worldwide, is expanding its consumer battery and solar architecture into small business and enterprise markets. The company is transferring its modular hardware, dynamic tariff optimization and AI-driven software from residential use cases to commercial operators facing multi-year grid connection queues and volatile electricity pricing.
"Small and medium-sized enterprises face the exact same energy price fluctuations and high costs as individual consumers," said Nick Chen, Chief Strategy Officer at EcoFlow. He said mass clean-energy adoption depends on extreme simplicity, modular scalability and intelligent software automation -- attributes EcoFlow is now applying to business energy management to cut operating expenses and secure power supply resilience.
Panel of regulators and grid operators addresses connection bottlenecks threatening industrial growth
The session, titled "Flexible by Design: Energy Resilience for Business," brought together Bram Claeys, Secretary General of the Council of European Energy Regulators (CEER); James Matthys-Donnadieu, Chief Customer, Markets and Systems Officer at Elia Group; and Eulalia Flo, Vice President of Growth and Emerging Markets, Europe at Equinix. Phillip Cornell, Senior Advisor for Energy and Sustainability at Economist Enterprise, moderated the discussion.
Panelists examined how negative wholesale price periods and grid bottlenecks are reshaping corporate investment decisions across Europe, and discussed flexible connection agreements and demand-response mechanisms as near-term fixes for industrial growth constrained by connection queues. The group also assessed the role of distributed storage, solar assets and energy management software in balancing supply and demand alongside transmission networks, with an eye toward how regulatory and technology shifts will shape electricity market design and European competitiveness through 2030.
The full panel recording is available on demand through The Economist Events portal. EcoFlow will showcase its residential and commercial energy ecosystems at IFA Berlin 2026, running September 4-8 at Messe Berlin, Hall 3.2.