Johannes Weißl-Muhs studied computer science in Munich and now lives with his family in Berlin. He has spent over 13 years building virtual power plants (VPPs), initially using Erlang and later Elixir. He considers the BEAM a perfect fit for this domain, offering fault tolerance and scalability to reliably stabilize the power grid. Johannes leads the backend development team for the VPP platform at sonnen, where he enjoys leveraging BEAM’s strengths in high-stakes, real-world systems. Additionally, he can juggle four balls—and sometimes even five!
As renewables reshape the energy landscape, the stability of the power grid demands smarter solutions. Sonnen’s Virtual Power Plant (VPP) networks tens of thousands of home batteries to stabilize the grid, reduce emissions, and reward users.
At the core is a distributed, fault-tolerant, and scalable Elixir backend. In this talk, we’ll explore the sonnenVPP architecture — from edge devices to market-facing APIs — and share lessons learned from scaling to production. We’ll dive into why Elixir and Rust were key to our success. Discover how software engineering meets green tech to keep the lights on sustainably.
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