Is Resilience a Lie We Tell Ourselves?
The hosts:
Dr. Till Stenzel, SET Ventures
Katharina Beitz, Vireo Ventures
What is this Ripple about?
As the shift to distributed energy removes single points of failure, we are replacing them with millions of new attack vectors. Bringing together operators, investors, and founders, this session will debate whether we can actually secure a decentralized energy system, or whether we're just trading one set of risks for another.
Why this topic timely or urgent in 2026
The move towards distributed energy is unstoppable - electrification, local production, local consumption. But every solar inverter, home battery, and smart meter we connect expands the attack surface area for hackers and hostile actors. The planned cyberattack on distributed energy assets in Poland in late 2025 is just one recent example of this risk becoming real. Meanwhile, most energy tech investors still don't look at cybersecurity when evaluating deals, and most founders building decentralized systems are still early on the learning curve when it comes to security. The gap between deployment speed and security readiness is widening - not closing.
Key questions or challenges being explored
Decentralization removes the honeypot but creates millions of entry points. Are we actually building a more resilient energy system - or are we just shifting risk from one level to another?
If you're building or operating a decentralized energy system today, have you thought through the security implications? What are you seeing, what's missing, and where should startups be building?
As energy assets become targets of cyber warfare, where is the line between civilian infrastructure and strategic assets - and what does that mean for operators, investors, and founders?
The main tension or debate at the heart of this discussion
Decentralization vs. security: distributing energy production eliminates the single points of failure that made centralized systems vulnerable -- but it replaces them with an attack surface no single operator can oversee or control. The more devices we connect in the name of resilience, the more entry points we create for those who want to exploit the system. The uncomfortable question at the center of this Ripple is whether the very architecture we're building to make energy more resilient is, in fact, making it more fragile.
Who would get the most value from attending this Ripple?
Operators deploying or managing distributed energy assets, investors in energy tech asking whether cybersecurity should be part of their diligence, and founders building in this space who want to learn from real-world experience.