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BME to play key role in renewing Europe’s electricity system
2026. 06. 12.
Creating an AI foundation layer for the power grid will increase efficiency, support the sustainability transition, strengthen technological competitiveness and help maintain control over critical infrastructure.
In early June, EU leaders and representatives from industry and academia signed an agreement at the European Parliament launching AI.grids, an initiative aimed at creating the first pan-European artificial intelligence foundation model developed for electricity grids. BME participates in the project as a founding partner.
The mission of AI.grids is to turn the European energy sector’s digitalisation and AI strategies into working solutions in areas such as decision support for grid operation, state estimation and system control, voltage regulation and congestion management, as well as grid development and hosting capacity analyses. The initiative is of truly strategic importance because
it does not define itself as an isolated research project, but as a practical implementer of the digitalisation and artificial intelligence agenda of Europe’s energy sector.
The ambition is clear: to build the first pan-European AI foundation model tailored to electricity grids, one that learns general representations from large-scale and diverse grid data, and can then be fine-tuned for a range of operational and planning tasks. This is important because the European electricity system is changing rapidly: the share of renewables is increasing, cross-border cooperation is becoming more intensive, operational reserves are shrinking, and, at the same time, system operators are having to deal with ever-larger and more heterogeneous volumes of data. The current, task-specific and fragmented AI toolkit provides only a partial answer to these challenges.
The Role of BME and VIK
BME is involved in this work as a founding member, in a research institute role and with a "key player" status. Its representative is István Vokony, Head of the Department of Electric Power Engineering (on the right). The department’s international activity is reflected in the fact that in May it was represented at the IEEE Transmission & Distribution Conference and Exposition, and also hosted experts from German TSOs – TenneT, Amprion, 50Hertz – as part of a professional collaboration. It has decades of research experience within the European Union, and several of its staff hold executive positions in international professional organisations. This is important because, in this field, workshops with a strong technical background and extensive international networks are precisely the ones that can create real value. If AI.grids does indeed prove to be one of the cornerstones of the future shared AI toolkit for European grid operation, then through the participation of BME and the Department of Electric Power Engineering, Hungarian research expertise will be among those shaping this new era of European energy technology.
The initiative has now moved from the world of workshops, working group discussions and legal drafts into the phase of actual implementation. Dan Jørgensen, European Commissioner for Energy and Housing, also signed the document, under which the European Commission's Directorate-General for Energy will contribute to the project as an institutional observer. The strategic direction can thus take shape beyond national and sectoral interests, along shared rules.
Commissioner Dan Jørgensen
The aim of AI.grids is not to create a closed, vendor-dependent product, but to establish a European infrastructure and a body of knowledge upon which future developments, industry pilots, and new joint projects can be built. The agreement allows for restricted data access, limited workspaces, federated learning, and compute-to-data solutions, but mandates open, standard licences for the results wherever possible.
This serves both the interests of openness and European data sovereignty.
Accordingly, the legal framework is based on the GDPR, the limited processing of data, and future regulatory compliance. Although AI.grids is not itself legislation, its operational logic aligns well with the fundamental principle of the EU AI Act that, in the case of AI systems used in high-risk or critical environments, safety, documentation, transparency, and human oversight are not optional but built-in requirements. For this reason, its significance extends beyond technology: it shows how AI development in the European energy sector can be organised in a way that is competitive, open and compatible with regulation.
Partners of the project:
Rector's Office, Communications Directorate