Å Energi Transfers GridTools to NODES (2025)

Three linked web clippings on the September 2025 transfer of GridTools, a Norwegian DSO grid decision-support tool, from Å Energi to NODES: the NODES press release (“Å Energi transfers the GridTools platform to NODES to accelerate grid innovation,” 26 Sept 2025), Å Energi’s own GridTools product page, and Å Energi’s general flexibility-services page.

What GridTools is

A modular decision-support tool for regional/local distribution grid operation: it forecasts and helps DSOs pre-empt grid problems (congestion, voltage) using flexible resources, automating processes that would otherwise require manual intervention. Modelling covers low/medium voltage (local distribution) through medium/high voltage (regional distribution), including N-1 and N-0.9 contingency cases.

GridTools was first released in 2016 for the NorFlex project, with Agder Energi as first customer — the same NorFlex demonstration (Source - NorFlex Project (NODES, 2019-2023)) that co-founded NODES’ own flexibility-trading platform (Agder Energi, Glitre Energi, NODES, Statnett). It was subsequently used by Elvia in the “Mikroenergisystem Furuset” project, and by the Nextgrid and Euroflex projects.

The transfer (September 2025)

Å Energi — the November 2022 merger of NorFlex co-founders Agder Energi and Glitre Energi (the merged network company is Glitre Nett, already documented in NODES‘s Euroflex coverage) — transferred GridTools to NODES. GridTools was “already fully integrated into the NODES Platform” and actively used by Norwegian DSOs in the Euroflex and Nextgrid projects prior to the transfer; the move brings both under one management structure. NODES frames it as combining “the analytical power of GridTools with the transactional capabilities of the NODES Platform,” and states the platform “will remain open and interoperable, continuing to support multiple marketplaces, operational technologies, and standalone services for DSOs.”

Å Energi’s own framing (Svein Are Folgerø, Chair, Å Energi Fleksibilitet): the transfer gives GridTools “a strong development environment and access to a larger market,” while achieving “a more streamlined and natural company structure” for Å Energi itself — i.e. this reads as Å Energi exiting direct platform ownership/maintenance of a tool it no longer sees as core to its own business, not as NODES acquiring a DSO.

What this does and doesn’t tell us about NODES’ “neutrality”

This is an asset/product transfer and integration, not disclosed evidence of an equity stake or corporate ownership link between Å Energi and NODES AS — the wiki’s existing data gap on NODES’ ownership structure remains open. What it does establish is a years-long, multi-project partnership between NODES and the Agder Energi/Glitre Energi/Å Energi lineage: co-founders of NorFlex (2019), through Euroflex (Å Energi’s Glitre Nett is a named Euroflex market), to this 2025 platform-integration deal. NODES’ commercial relationships with other DSOs (Swedish E.ON markets excepted, since E.ON runs its own SWITCH platform; Canadian Essex Powerlines; other Norwegian nettselskap) are separate and not implicated by this specific transfer — but it is a caution against treating “third-party operator” as synonymous with “no closer relationship to any DSO than any other.”

Å Energi’s flexibility services — the three-part offer

Å Energi’s own flexibility-services page frames its (now former, for GridTools) commercial flexibility offering as three parts: NODES (market/trading, “an independent exchange for trading distributed flexibility”), GridTools (now transferred), and Enfo — an Å Energi subsidiary “developing advanced systems for identifying, optimising and managing flexible consumer loads in flexibility markets” (a commercial aggregator, not previously documented in this wiki). This maps directly onto the DSO/GridTools framing already in the GridTools product page itself: a flexibility market (NODES) + commercial aggregators (Enfo) + technical aggregators + the DSO’s own decision-support layer (GridTools) as the necessary pieces of the “digital value chain” for flexibility.

Data gaps

• NODES AS’s actual ownership/shareholder structure — still not disclosed by any source ingested to date

Relevance to existing wiki

• NODES — corrects an unsourced “natural choice for DSOs” claim with this concrete partnership history; adds GridTools as a platform capability
• Source - NorFlex Project (NODES, 2019-2023) — Agder Energi is the shared founding partner; this is a direct continuation of that 2019 relationship
• Source - Euroflex Norwegian LFM (NODES, 2026) — Glitre Nett (Å Energi’s network company) is a named Euroflex market