Top 5 Withthegrid alternatives (2025)

Optimizing the production of renewable energy is becoming more and more complex, with a vast increase in hardware vendors, market players and a rapid increase in innovation. Combined with increasing market volatility and congestion on the electric grid, action needs to be taken now. 

Renewable asset owners need to be able to monitor their production in real-time and adjust it based on instructions from the Distribution System Operator (DSO) or market conditions. 

This may involve curtailing production in periods of low demand for electricity or negative electricity prices, or ramping it up when the grid needs more generation or prices are favorable.

Luckily, there is a range of energy asset management solutions available in the market that integrate any type of hardware, and can be integrated to digital solutions in the cloud, so your assets can be made steerable and data insights can be retrieved from the asset.

But with multiple options on the market, how do you decide which one works best for your generation or storage sites? Here’s a list of the top 5 energy asset integration solution providers that are alternatives to Withthegrid:

• Helin
• Spectral
• Meteocontrol
• Gantner Instruments
• OEMs own platforms

In this article, we’ll explore each option to help you choose the best one for managing your assets. 

How to evaluate energy asset management platforms 

When choosing the best platform for managing your renewable energy assets, there are several factors to consider. 

Firstly, check that the solution integrates with your existing equipment and systems (or choose a technology-agnostic platform). Also check that the solution can be easily scaled up over time if you develop or acquire additional generation sites, including different types of generation or storage assets. And of course, check that the solution complies with any regional or national regulation, such as the Realtime Interface (RTI) in the Netherlands. 

As you’re dealing with sensitive data, it’s important to confirm that your chosen platform has robust security features and certifications in place. It is also good to compare the latency of the platforms to ensure you’ll have access to the most accurate data in real-time. 

Then you need to evaluate its capabilities and features to ensure it can do everything you need it to do or can be customized with additional modules. Here are some capabilities and features that are useful for most renewable energy asset owners: 

• Real-time monitoring of product data
• Advanced curtailment, including ramp rates 
• Load management
• Rule based optimization
• Asset health monitoring 
• Historical data and reporting 
• Edge computing based solution
• Easy deployment of applications & analytics
• Responsive customer support team

And of course, you should do some research on the vendor itself in terms of previous customers and in-house expertise. Bonus points if the vendor is already working with top-tier brands in your sector. 

Withthegrid and 5 alternatives

Withthegrid’s Teleport Gateway is designed to connect all your energy assets to the cloud quickly, securely, and with full compliance. The ‘Teleport’ itself is a piece of hardware you connect to your energy assets.

Once you’ve installed your ‘Teleports’, you can connect your grid system to your IT systems and use it for a bunch of use cases. One of these use cases is you can enable automatic curtailment of solar panels and wind turbines by your energy trader.

However, other platforms may be better suited to your needs. Here are 5 alternatives to Withthegrid’s Teleport Gateway.

‍1. Helin

Helin specializes in converging OT and IT systems, creating local smart grids with on-site hardware, and subsequently the integration of data and control streams to endpoints in the cloud.

‍Smart Grid Manager is a scalable and secure bridge between your renewable energy assets and your energy management systems, providing real-time visibility and control of your production. 

Smart Grid Manager easily integrates into your existing tech stack and can be adapted over time by altering the APIs or adding new modules to meet your evolving needs. For example, the Dynamic Power Control function of the Smart Grid Manager acts as a closed loop control mechanism, pro-actively curtailing your production based on consumption and maximum grid feed-in.

It also fully complies with the EU’s Network Code on Requirements for Generators (NC RfG), and the Dutch Realtime Interface (RTI) requirement. It’s one of the few RTI-compliant solutions certified by Netbeheer Nederland. 

Helin is already enabling leading renewable energy developers, like Sunrock and HVC, to control and optimize their generation and maximize their returns using Smart Grid Manager. Want to learn more about how Smart Grid Manager could benefit your operations? Just get in touch. 

Key features:

• Prevent negative returns during negative electricity prices
• Sub-set control through API for PPA/ trading partners
• Open infrastructure to deploy any (3rd party) application
• High-fidelity telemetry data
• Edge computing infrastructure
• Real-time interface compliant (mandatory for installations with >1MW capacity)
• Load management & load balancing
• Hardware agnostic
• 24/7 support

2. Spectral

Another Dutch company, Spectral, offers STELLAR, a suite of vertically-integrated products designed to optimize the operation of generation assets, storage, Virtual Power Plants and smart grids. 

Spectral’s solution for renewable energy, STELLAR Energy Control, integrates with generation assets to enable real-time control and curtailment based on negative market prices.  

The solution is technology-agnostic so can be easily scaled up over time, and offers AI-enabled, fully automated predictive control algorithms. It primarily focuses on enabling curtailment based on market conditions, so if monitoring asset health is a priority, you may want to explore additional options.

Key features:

• Real-time energy balancing  
• AI-enabled predictive control
• Stacked energy services 
• Cloud based EMS
• RTI Compliant

3. Meteocontrol

Meteocontrol is a Germany-based company that offers asset management specifically for PV systems. Its platform is a cloud-based software that is designed to take your efficiency to the next level and fundamentally optimize your day-to-day business. 

You’ll need to install their specific data loggers to gather all the data for monitoring your solar energy installations. These data loggers transfer all the relevant data from your PV system to their software environment, which meteocontrol calls VCOM (short for Virtual Control Room). This gives you an overview of the performance of your PV assets. 

While the VCOM  platform allows you to monitor, manage, and enhance the performance of your renewable energy assets, it is more focused on optimizing financial returns. It is also focused on PV generation only. 

So if you’re looking for a platform that helps you monitor asset health and adjust your production based on other factors (e.g. instructions from the DSO), or if you own other types of generation then an alternate platform would be a better choice for you. 

Key features: 

• Graphical user interface for asset health visualisation
• Asset control capabilities
• Specialized for PV generation 
• Log (Archiving curtailment actions) 

‍4. Gantner Instruments

Gantner Instruments offers a comprehensive monitoring and control system for large PV power plants. This system integrates hardware components such as monitoring devices, power quality meters, and data loggers with a cloud-based SaaS solution.

It also enables real-time data processing and dynamic parameter calculations to support decision-making. This can help with tasks like grid curtailment studies and developing preventive maintenance strategies.

However, the available features and capabilities vary significantly depending on the type of generation (e.g. wind, PV, hydro) so it’s worth keeping this in mind, especially if you own multiple different types of generation assets. 

Key features: 

• Pre-configured measurement settings for various PV technologies
• Browser based HMI/SCADA
• Real-time performance prediction
• ±2.5% accuracy (nRMSE) on large-scale plants

5. OEM vendor software (e.g. SMA & Sungrow)

Apart from the abovementioned asset management platforms, you can also opt for solutions developed by original equipment manufacturers (OEM) like SMA and Sungrow. These companies produce parts and equipment that may be marketed by other companies.

Let’s take Sungrow as an example. In a nutshell, Sungrow creates solar inverters for PV systems (and much more). But their hardware products also come with a comprehensive lifecycle management app called iSolarCloud. This allows for extensive data collection, plant monitoring and operation & maintenance (O&M).

Combine all this, and you have a decent solution that facilitates PV & energy curtailment. Especially when using Sungrow’s DC-coupling solar-plus-storage. Similarly, SMA’s Power Limiter allows you to set up custom curtailment times and comes with pre-configured curtailment levels. SMA also developed a range of software products that can help you with PV & energy curtailment.

If you are operating a small portfolio of assets, and mainly work with a single vendor, then utilizing the OEM provided solution is a viable option. However, this becomes unfeasible once you operate a vast portfolio across multiple vendors and solutions, in such a scenario, you require an agnostic middleware layer.

Why Smart Grid Manager is the best solution for all types of generation and storage assets

Now you have a better understanding of the renewable energy asset management platforms on the market, but are you still undecided? The above platforms all offer solutions for monitoring and controlling your generation assets. 

However, if you're looking for a solution to manage a portfolio of different assets in the most cybersecure environment possible, that is scalable and will meet today's and the future's requirements, then the Smart Grid Manager is the way to go. 

Helin has been helping leading energy companies to optimize their operations since 2017, enabling them to earn higher returns and reduce O&M costs. Want to learn how you can do the same? Book a call with one of our experts to talk through how Smart Grid Manager can help improve your asset performance.