Google.org, the charity arm of Google, is funding free software that helps Europe’s power grid operators plan their networks and forecast demand. Its $2.5M grant goes to LF Energy, which runs open-source energy projects under the Linux Foundation. Open-source code is free for anyone to use and change.
The money goes to Linux Foundation Europe through INCO, a global network of startup incubators and accelerators that administers the grant. LF Energy announced the funding on 10 November 2026 at Enlit Europe, an energy industry conference in Vienna, Austria.
Over two years, the programme will back existing LF Energy projects, with extra focus on smaller grid operators and regions with fewer resources. LF Energy hosts more than three dozen open-source projects, and its members include utilities, energy companies, software vendors, technology providers and researchers.
Grids Under Growing Strain
LF Energy says Europe’s electricity networks now carry more than they were built for. More renewable power and electric heating and transport add to the load, and so do data centres.
New lines are slow to build. The European Commission’s grid action plan of November 2023 put the grid investment needed this decade at €584bn. It said about 40% of Europe’s local distribution grids were more than 40 years old and that permits for upgrades could take four to ten years.
The Commission raised its estimate in December 2025, when it proposed a grids package. It put the investment needed by 2040 at €1.2tn, with about €730bn going to local distribution networks and €477bn to high-voltage transmission. It also proposed raising EU funding for grid projects in its 2028 to 2034 budget from €5.84bn to €29.91bn, and said cross-border power links were on track for 41 gigawatts by 2030, against a target of 88 gigawatts.
That leaves operators under pressure to get more out of the networks they already have. Shared open-source tools let them pool that effort instead of each one building or buying its own systems. LF Energy says that because the work is open source, its benefits reach every operator, not only those with the money and staff to build such tools in-house.
From Synthetic Data To Demand Forecasts
Researchers and operators use OpenSynth to study how heat pumps, electric cars and solar panels affect local grids without touching real customer data. The project shares synthetic data, which computer models generate to mirror real usage. It includes 10 million AI-generated household electricity profiles and the real layout of France’s high-voltage grid, published by RTE, which runs that network.
On the high-voltage side, PowSyBl analyses transmission grids, the lines that carry power over long distances. Operators use it to ease congestion, the bottlenecks that form when lines reach their limit, and to plan upgrades and hook up new wind and solar farms. RTE runs it in its live systems, as does TenneT, which operates the Dutch high-voltage network. LF Energy says TenneT built a PowSyBl-based system in five months and made its calculations ten times faster.
Closer to homes and businesses, Power Grid Model handles calculations for distribution grids, the local networks that deliver power to customers. It can test thousands of what-if cases in one go and has passed 10 million downloads. Dutch operators Alliander, Enexis and Stedin use it and help build it.
OpenSTEF predicts how much electricity will be used and generated, over periods from a few minutes to several days. It relies on machine learning, a type of AI that learns patterns from data. Alliander uses it to predict where its grid will become congested, and Sigholm uses it to plan district heating.
Money For Training, Not Just Code
Beyond code, the grant pays for technical guides, implementation material and training courses, along with workshops held alongside LF Energy Summit Europe, the foundation’s European event. The programme will also translate some of the material into several EU languages, so operators with limited staff and budgets can adopt the tools more easily.
“AI will only be as useful to grid operators as the data and models it is built on,” said Alex Thornton, executive director of LF Energy. He said the grant invests in that foundation of open data, grid models and forecasting tools.
Adam Elman, director of sustainability for Europe, the Middle East and Africa at Google, said a reliable grid needs “not just new physical infrastructure, but open digital tools”. He said the funding would help “grid operators of every size across Europe modernise grid planning”.
Where Google And Others Fit In
Google.org has backed other AI work this autumn. In October 2026, it and Google DeepMind put $3M into a research lab at business school INSEAD. The lab studies how people can thrive as AI changes work and life.
Google’s own power needs are also growing fast. In its 2026 environmental report, the company reported a 37% annual rise in electricity demand, which it called its largest load growth in history. It signed more than 12 gigawatts of new clean energy deals in 2025. Google says some of its data centres in Asia, Europe and the US can shift flexible computing work to ease demand on local grids. Data centres are one of the pressures LF Energy lists on Europe’s grids.
Google also runs a separate startup accelerator focused on AI for energy in Europe and Israel. The equity-free programme covers software for utilities and grid operators, grid upgrades and flexible power use.
Startups are tackling grid problems too. On the hardware side, Paris-based HyLight uses small airships to inspect power lines for faults.
Europe expects to spend hundreds of billions of euros on its grids, and the $2.5M grant covers one narrow part of that work. It funds shared software, training and translations to help operators of every size plan and forecast on the networks they already run.
