Coordinates >300,000 home devices for the clean energy transition
Automates battery dispatches within 30 seconds to steady the grid
Onboards new home hardware appliance brands in under one week
Axle Energy uses Google Cloud container and data solutions to orchestrate 300,000 smart home devices, balancing grid demand safely.
Axle Energy uses Google Cloud container and data solutions to orchestrate 300,000 smart home devices, balancing grid demand safely.
Connecting home energy assets to the grid with a scalable cloud infrastructure
As electricity grids transition away from fossil fuels toward renewable energy sources, balancing power supply with real-time demand has become an intricate puzzle. Clean energy generation depends on changeable weather, making it less controllable than traditional fossil fuel plants. Meanwhile, the rise of electric vehicles (EVs), home batteries, and heat pumps places a new, localized strain on electricity networks. This can lead operators to restrict clean device installations, slowing the transition to green energy.
Axle Energy bridges this gap by acting as a B2B software platform and API provider that connects distributed home energy devices directly to electricity markets. By automatically adjusting when these appliances draw power, or exporting stored battery energy back to the grid during peak strain, the platform transforms flexible household demand into a predictable resource. In this way, Axle Energy helps to balance the wider network, keeps electrical infrastructure stable, and allows consumers to earn cash rewards.
Google Cloud gives us the intuitive developer experience we need as a fast-moving startup. We want everyone on our team to confidently deploy and own their code. Google Cloud makes that simplicity a reality, allowing us to focus on solving problems for the grid rather than problems with our infrastructure.
Archy de Berker
Co-founder and CTO, Axle Energy
When building the platform, Axle Energy required a cloud foundation that could process large volumes of real-time device data reliably, without requiring a large infrastructure team. Co-founder and CTO Archy de Berker knew that Google Cloud offered a straightforward environment for running applications that would be simple for Axle Energy’s small team to manage.
Through the Google for Startups Cloud Program, de Berker then gained valuable insights into how to use Google Cloud security tools effectively to fulfill the company’s strict compliance audits, giving large enterprise energy clients peace of mind.
“Google Cloud gives us the intuitive developer experience we need as a fast-moving startup,” de Berker explains. “We want everyone on our team to confidently deploy and own their code. Google Cloud makes that simplicity a reality, allowing us to focus on solving problems for the grid rather than problems with our infrastructure.”
Stabilizing the grid and automating smart home optimization with GKE and Cloud Run
To keep electricity networks operating safely, power grid frequency must remain stable. If a major power station shuts down unexpectedly, frequency drops quickly, risking power failures across communities. Axle Energy uses Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) to run a continuous, fully automated monitoring system. When a frequency drop occurs, the platform triggers an immediate grid stabilization response within 30 seconds, commanding thousands of home batteries to export power back into the network.
Managing real-time grid imbalances means we have a strict 30-second window to coordinate thousands of home batteries, or risk grid instability. Google Kubernetes Engine gives us the reliability and zero-downtime execution needed to support national infrastructure.
Archy de Berker
Co-founder and CTO, Axle Energy
GKE delivers the constant availability needed to orchestrate this process. If a household suddenly switches on a high-power appliance like an induction cooktop, the system dynamically shifts the workload to another battery in its standby pool. This keeps the total grid contribution steady, helps prevent blackouts, and ensures communities maintain the reliable power and service they expect.
“Managing real-time grid imbalances means we have a strict 30-second window to coordinate thousands of home batteries, or risk grid instability,” de Berker explains. “Google Kubernetes Engine gives us the reliability and zero-downtime execution needed to support national infrastructure.”
Axle Energy also manages fluctuating daily data flows. When an EV owner plugs in a vehicle and requests an 80% charge by 7:00 AM, for example, the action sends a message through Pub/Sub to a controller running on Cloud Run. Cloud Run then scales up automatically to compute the optimal charging schedule based on personalized home variables, such as location, weather forecast, and specific hardware.
For home batteries and solar setups, Axle Energy uses Managed Service for Apache Airflow to manage hourly workflows. These workflows combine household demand predictions with local solar forecasts to build an efficient 24-hour energy plan to keep homes warm and cars charged at the lowest possible cost while maximizing renewable energy use.
Accelerating full-home automation with BigQuery
Since its inception, Axle Energy has grown to a team of 35 people, scaling its platform to over 300,000 connected energy assets across Europe. By using Google Cloud to handle expanding device capacity smoothly, the business has been able to grow rapidly without requiring a major, disruptive system re-architecting project. This stability allows the engineering team to move quickly, onboarding new hardware manufacturer brands—such as new models of smart car chargers, heat pumps, or home batteries—in less than one week.
Now, Axle Energy is working toward full-home energy coordination. Rather than optimizing a home battery or a car charger in isolation, the company is building models to manage a household’s entire electrical footprint simultaneously. To achieve this, Axle Energy compiles historical device data in BigQuery to simulate and evaluate the performance of new predictive configurations, ensuring the models work reliably when rolled out to live households.
As Axle Energy expands into more European countries, the company seamlessly duplicates its managed cloud database instances to satisfy strict regional data residency rules. This active approach minimizes regional compliance hurdles, allowing the engineering team to focus entirely on product innovation. By anchoring its expansion on this repeatable architecture, Axle Energy establishes a reliable foundation for long-term growth, smoothly transforming residential power usage into a cornerstone of a cleaner grid.
Our business is built around managing highly variable energy demand, and our compute loads are just as spiky. Google Cloud allows us to handle that volatility and grow our device capacity without changing our core architecture, ensuring we can continue to scale our platform to support Europe’s green energy transition.
Archy de Berker
Co-founder and CTO, Axle Energy
“Our business is built around managing highly variable energy demand, and our compute loads are just as spiky,” adds de Berker. “Google Cloud allows us to handle that volatility and grow our device capacity without changing our core architecture, ensuring we can continue to scale our platform to support Europe’s green energy transition.”
Axle Energy is powering the transition to clean energy. By connecting home energy assets like EV chargers, heat pumps, and batteries to electricity markets, Axle allows consumers to minimise bills while lowering grid carbon emissions.
Industries: Utilities, Startup
Location: UK
Products: Google Cloud, BigQuery, Cloud Run, Cloud Logging, Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), Managed Service for Apache Airflow (formerly Cloud Composer), Pub/Sub
