About OptimCE
Our mission and our vision
Our mission
OptimCE helps energy communities manage their members, meters and energy sharing without drowning in administrative complexity. Our mission is to make running an energy community as simple and accessible as possible, through an open source platform that is transparent and efficient — whether you host it yourself or let us take care of it for you.
Why OptimCE?
Energy communities play a growing role in the European energy transition. Yet the available management tools are often proprietary, expensive or unsuited to the specific needs of these structures. OptimCE addresses this need with an open solution, designed specifically for the European regulatory context — with no vendor lock-in and no hidden costs.
Born from a research project
OptimCE grew out of Locomotrice, a Walloon research project (2023–2026) funded by the Win2Wal programme of the Walloon Region. Led by the University of Liège (BEMS laboratory) and the CECOTEPE research centre, in partnership with citizen energy cooperatives, Locomotrice set out to build open source software for managing energy communities, co-designed with the people who run them.
That academic and community origin shapes OptimCE: a tool built around the real needs of energy communities, validated in the field and open by design.
- Programme: Win2Wal — Walloon Region
- Lead: University of Liège — BEMS laboratory
- Research partner: CECOTEPE
- Field partners: citizen energy cooperatives
- Period: 2023–2026
Two ways to use OptimCE
Whether you are a technical team or prefer a ready-to-use solution, OptimCE adapts to your situation.
Self-hosted
Deploy OptimCE on your own infrastructure, for free and without restriction, under the Apache 2.0 licence. You keep full control of your data, but you take care of hosting, updates and availability yourself — no service-level agreement (SLA) is provided.
View on GitHubOptimCE Cloud
The hosted, managed version, ready to use: no installation, no maintenance. OptimCE Cloud is currently in alpha and completely free — try it now. A paid plan will arrive as the product matures; alpha users will be notified well in advance.
Start nowContribute
OptimCE is an open source project and contributions are welcome. Whether you are a developer, designer, translator or simply passionate about energy communities, you can contribute in many ways.