The international IREDonline conference concluded on June 23, 2026 and overall attracted more than 250 registrations. This year’s theme was Battery Energy Storage Plants in Power Systems – Markets, Technologies and Regulation. Organised by DERlab e. V., the two-day event convened researchers, system operators, industry leaders, and policymakers from Europe, North America, Asia, and Australia.
Across six sessions, experts from EPRI, University of Toronto, IRENA, ESIG, Sandia National Laboratories, CSIRO, Amprion, and AIT among others, addressed policies and regulatory frameworks, energy trading, grid interoperability, island grid resilience, ancillary services, and R&D developments. IRENA reported a cost decline of 95% for 4-hour BESS units since 2010. For testing such units, DERlab presented its overview of their grid-forming BESS laboratory validation projects.
Co-Chairs Mark McGranaghan, Fellow at EPRI Europe, and Prof. Reza Iravani, University of Toronto, opened and closed the event.
The afternoon of the second day featured a Workshop on Grid Integration of Grid-Forming BESS into Modern Power Systems. These were free, open-access sessions co-organised by DERlab e.V., EPRI, and Fraunhofer IEE and were supported by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWE), under the framework of the GFI-Pilot (Pilot tests of grid-forming inverters in the distribution grid). The workshop bridged the gap between research and real-world application. Representatives from international demonstration projects shared practical insights and lessons learnt from real-world applications.
“With the accelerating pace of the energy transition, IREDonline has become a critical venue for global sharing of progress updates, challenges and new solutions.”
— Mark McGranaghan, conference chair, IREDonline 2026
The next IRED conference will be an in-person held in Delhi, India in April 2027 hosted by the India Smart Grid Forum (ISGF) in partnership with DERlab e. V.
Recordings and materials from IREDonline 2026 will be available at https://ired-online.der-lab.net.
For more information, visit www.ired-online.der-lab.net and www.der-lab.net.
Acknowledgement: The workshop was funded by the GFI-Pilot project (FKZ 03EI4091), financed by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy and supported by Projektträger Jülich. Responsibility for all content lies solely with the authors. The German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy is entirely exempt from any liability, and the content does not necessarily reflect the official opinion of the Ministry.
