Expanded DSO Entity with unified voice is a welcome step

Under European legislation the region’s system operators are required to form statutory organisations to coordinate on issues pertaining to the energy system such as network codes and long term planning to support the advancement of the energy agenda.

The oldest are ENTSO-E and ENTSOG respectively by the transmission system operators for electricity and gas, which were formed by the Third Energy Package in 2009.

With the advance of the energy transition and the emergence of hydrogen, a third complementary transmission level organisation for this vector – the wordily titled European Network of Network Operators of Hydrogen (ENNOH) – was mandated, with its establishment in July 2025.

Currently with 37 TSO members across 26 countries and having hit the ground running, its comprehensive work programme for the current year is focussed primarily on the ten year network development planning process as well as on data transparency for network users and quality monitoring.

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Much of this work will need to be undertaken together with ENTSO-E and ENTSOG but also with the complementary DSO organisation, the DSO Entity.

Perhaps because of this need for close collaboration across the voltage levels and energy vectors to effectively deliver the energy transition, the DSO Entity is organised differently.

Formally established in June 2021 for Europe’s electricity DSOs – of which only about 800 out of the approximately 3,000 DSOs are members, but nevertheless accounting for about 90% of the connected customers – the DSO Entity as mandated in the 2024 gas regulation is now in the process of incorporating the gas and hydrogen DSOs to create a ‘mega DSO’ organisation.

With a further potential 400 members representing some 87 million customer connections, “the new DSO Entity will reflect with a system-integrated view on the strategic importance of infrastructure that best serves the customer for delivering reliable, resilient and affordable decarbonisation in the future energy system”, a statement on the incorporation reads.

Importantly, the expanded DSO Entity will be able to ‘speak’ with a single voice for DSOs, unlike for the TSOs who are spread across the three separate organisations.

The question also arises of the future of the existing industry associations. As E.DSO and CurrENT have demonstrated since the DSO Entity was established in being as active as before, there also should be continuing need for others such as GEODE, CEDEC, Eurogas or GD4S.

Registration for the gas/hydrogen DSOs is now open and these DSOs are recommended to join, to enable them to play a strong role in European developments at DSO level.

Much work has been put into developing a revised governance structure and new rules of procedure, but the expanded DSO Entity is likely to bring new challenges as it grows.

But these should not be insurmountable for the benefit of the DSOs themselves, who are required to integrate almost three quarters of new renewables, and ultimately for the customers for whom they provide the infrastructure to receive and deliver energy.

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