Implementing energy-based controllers in software represents a challenge for software engineers, as additional expertise is required to abide by the physics-domain constraints of energy exchange in the design and structure of the control software. Our paper bridges the gap between software engineering and the physics domain by conveying energy exchange to control-software modelling. We use principles of physical systems and the bond-graph modelling language to identify the mechanisms and constraints of energy exchange and represent them as data-communication services for software models. This work resulted in metamodels and models for power and energy communication that can facilitate the first-time-right implementation of robot-control software.