Around 40% of EU grids are already more than 40 years old, while Europe may need more than one million additional workers to support the energy transition.
These are the findings from a new report by SET Ventures and Future Energy Ventures, outlining that while Europe is plagued by an ageing energy infrastructure, the continent could end up leading the deployment of robotics in energy infrastructure.
At the same time, the infrastructure those workers would need to build, inspect and maintain is expanding rapidly: solar capacity is projected to more than double by 2030, wind capacity could rise by 84%, electricity demand by 60%, and cross-border transmission capacity is expected to double.
Against that backdrop, robotics is starting to look less like an experimental technology and more like a necessity to maintain and strengthen European energy systems.
The grid is running out of slack
The strongest evidence so far is in inspection and monitoring, where autonomous drones and robots are already moving into commercial deployment.
According to the report, human crews installing utility-scale solar can manage around 800 panels per day, while robotic systems can exceed 4,000. For high-voltage infrastructure, traditional close inspections may take between 15 and 20 minutes per tower and cover roughly 10 to 15 towers per day.
Drones can bring that below five minutes per tower and cover more than 50 towers in a day, with some capable of flying between roughly 100 and 350 kilometres per mission.
The economics become even clearer in wind technology. Drone-based turbine inspections can cost between €500 and €1,000 per turbine, compared with rope-access inspections that can cost as much as €10,000.
The analysis also cites examples in which drone-based inspection has found between two and five times more defects than helicopter-based inspection teams and 48% more than ground crews.
Earlier fault detection can prevent expensive failures, reduce unnecessary component replacement and improve the utilisation of existing assets. The study cites solar park inspections costing €50,000 to €150,000 but potentially saving more than €1 million annually, while undetected wind turbine blade damage can lead to replacements costing between €200,000 and €1 million.
The technology is here, but are the investors?
For investors in the energy sector, however, those headline efficiencies only matter if they can be reproduced consistently across different assets and networks.
Michał Gawęda, Partner at Montis VC and frequent contributor to EU-Startups on topics of energy innovation, spoke to us about the future of the continent’s energy grid.
“Europe’s grid challenge is as much about execution as it is about investment. With 40% of EU grids over 40 years old, operators need to inspect and maintain more infrastructure while skilled teams are already stretched. Robotics can help them spot faults earlier and make better use of the people they have, but for me the question is what changes for the operator in practice.
“Can the technology reduce downtime or costs, work within existing systems and deliver the same results across different networks? If it can, we are looking at a business that can scale well beyond a successful pilot.”
Michał’s distinction between a successful pilot and a scalable infrastructure business is becoming central to the sector. The underlying technology is improving quickly, but the more defensible opportunities may lie in the software and operational layers that allow fleets of different robots and drones to work across multiple sites.
Pilots are giving way to platforms
The energy robotics value chain now stretches well beyond hardware. It includes autonomy and intelligence, robot operating systems, fleet management, mission planning, inspection software, asset intelligence and physical work.
The falling cost of hardware is also making those models easier to deploy. Compute, batteries, sensors and actuators have all become cheaper, while AI has improved robots’ ability to perceive their surroundings and make decisions in real time.
The report points to actuator costs falling from around €3000 ($3500) to €1500 ($1700), alongside broader declines in industrial robot costs, while cheaper cameras, LiDAR and tactile sensors are reducing the cost of machine perception.
The innovators behind the advancements
Marc Dassler, co-founder and CEO of Darmstadt-based Korial (formerly Energy Robotics), spoke to us about how parts of the energy sector have already moved well beyond experimentation, with autonomous inspection becoming part of routine operations in oil and gas.
“The pilot phase is over – Korial has completed more than 1 million autonomous inspections and 300,000 hours of operations for Shell, bp, BASF and E.ON, and today our platform runs fleets of robots and drones that monitor critical assets multiple times a day as a routine part of operations and maintenance.
“In oil and gas we set the benchmark: hardware, processes and software have matured to the point where our customers move from proof of concept straight into fleet deployment, and Korial is the platform they scale on. The power sector, being more cost-sensitive, has waited on affordable, capable hardware – and that barrier is now disappearing as a new generation of lower-cost robots and drones reaches the market.
“That is why the next 24 months will decide who owns fleet-scale autonomy in the power sector – and the winner will be the platform that is already proven at fleet scale today, not one still being built around a single device.”
But the power sector brings stricter safety and integration requirements.
We also had a chance to hear from Niall Coogan, co-founder and CEO of Leeds-based AssetCool, whose work centres on robotic systems designed for overhead power networks. He sees the sector’s labour and infrastructure pressures as a strong argument for automation, while cautioning that the requirements for deployment are unusually demanding.
“Energy infrastructure faces compounding pressures: a generational increase in electricity demand, ageing assets and a skilled workforce shrinking as retirements outpace new entrants. Together, these factors make the sector ripe for automation, with robotics offering ways to inspect, maintain and upgrade networks faster while reducing reliance on scarce specialist labour.
But utilities are safety-critical environments with no room for error, and even collecting training data is difficult, requiring specialist knowledge, skills and operational expertise. Extensive R&D with rigorous, first-rate testing and validation are therefore essential. Scaling also presents a significant technical and operational challenge, requiring proven safety, reliability and integration into utilities’ everyday operations.
“Once you achieve this however, the long-term opportunity for robotics across energy systems is enormous, and we are only scratching the surface. It is an incredibly exciting time.”
Europe’s scale test starts now
Europe has a distinct position in the emerging market. China retains a cost advantage in robot hardware, while the US dominates AI startup funding. Europe, however, already has 267 robots per 10,000 workers, making it one of the world’s densest robotics markets, while the EU robotics software market is projected to grow from €3 billion to €12 billion by 2030.
The question for 2026 is not if the robots have the capabalities to perform their tasks (they do), but if energy companies can deploy them effectively, repeatedly, and into existing systems.
If that happens, the shift from pilot projects to infrastructure-scale deployment will be driven less by the arrival of one breakthrough machine than by the platforms, software layers and business models capable of making fleets of machines useful every day.