Unlock your power – in Czechia

ENERKOM’s engagement with municipalities begins with data, not solar panels. Energy management (EnMS, in accordance with ISO 50001) is now running in 11 municipalities, monitoring over 160 public buildings — schools and municipal facilities whose consumption data form the foundation for every subsequent community energy decision. The questions that matter most to prospective members — Who owns my data? How is shared energy allocated? Who decides? — are answered structurally. Metering-point data always remains with the respective user, with direct access to ENERKOM’s internal system for verification. Transparency is a precondition for trust, not its by-product.

EU-backed funding has been essential. A grant through the Czech National Recovery Plan, funded via NextGenerationEU, enabled the formal community energy structure and its data backbone. ENERKOM’s participation in RENvolveIT — a Horizon Europe project with Czech legal organisation Frank Bold as national partner — has brough knowledge and access to a broader European practitioner network. 

Growth has been gradual and deliberate: from 15 members and 50 kWp in June 2025 to 74 members, approximately 680 kWp, around 150 metering points, 14 generation sources, and over 70 MWh shared between August 2025 and May 2026. A 330-kW biogas plant will be integrated into the sharing system from September 2026.

What motivates people to join is, almost always, economic. ENERKOM does not try to obscure this. The moment of deeper realisation comes later — when a member sees that the energy they are using is physically produced in their own municipality, on the roof of a school or a neighbouring building. Abstract ‘green energy’ becomes something local and their own. In the current geopolitical climate, energy self-sufficiency has become a second motivator: local production and consumption as the most reliable form of resilience. As Lang observes: “If you plan things carefully, apply some practical wisdom, and do the energy transition right, the environmental benefits will be built in.”

Photovoltaics communicate most easily. But the more complex challenge lies in the allocation key: how shared energy is distributed when multiple sources with different parameters are involved. This quickly becomes a question of fairness and governance that the community itself must decide. Underlying it all is what ENERKOM calls the Regional Energy Operating System (REOS) — not software, but the operating logic of a region: connecting municipalities, citizens, and sources; managing the data backbone; converting informal cooperation into a functional, verifiable structure.

ENERKOM is candid about what is transferable and what is not. The most transferable element is not the technology but the method. Where an established local action group operates — and over 2 700 do, across the EU, under the LEADER approach — the social infrastructure for community energy is already partially in place. LEADER principles, cross-sector partnership, and a bottom-up approach are exportable; the specific legislative framework and regional character of Podlipansko are not. As a full member of REScoop.eu, ENERKOM is well-positioned to share what it has learned. The next phase is using aggregated data to make the right decisions for future projects that can be integrated into REOS and move the region toward genuine energy self-sufficiency.

“Twenty years of experience with LAG Podlipansko has taught the region a valuable lesson — that the most is achieved when people come together at one table and believe in each other,” Chairwoman Pošíková reflects. “It’s not about numbers, or even the technology. It’s about staying connected with the community and the villages, and knowing people by name.”