The crisis that was brought by the Covid-19 pandemic could not be anticipated, but the industry is trying to perceive the volume of demand and cope with market challenges. “, said Sabin Posea, General Manager, Eximprod Grup, at EnergynomicsTalks.
“In the last two months, the state of emergency has changed the rules of the activity, and Eximprod has felt this as much as the rest of the market. The difference consists of the way companies act. Our colleagues behaved well and we continued the activity respecting the rules imposed by the authorities. Being service providers for energy distributors and transporters, we have worked on sites, we put into operation power stations, we installed equipment, as an example: we installed and commissioned a 110 kV circuit breaker produced by Eximprod just yesterday” Sabin Posea told us.
During these site work we encountered difficulties in identifying accommodation, all meetings and discussions took place digitally, but the main thing remained the same: the concepts of business and economy have not undergone major changes. “We had to do our job. It became harder, but not impossible. I don’t think that Romania reacted differently from the rest of Europe or the rest of the world,” Posea added.
Economic activities were not completely blocked
“Fortunately, economic activities were not completely blocked, although they became more difficult. We believe that the impact of this period will be positive: we learned how to work from home 100%, as it was not being done before. Now we are trying to find a balance between these two ways.”
All market players are talking about automation, digitalization, and new technological solutions lately.
“Actions have been taken in this direction. There have been companies that acted faster and others that have done so slower. We need to differentiate between digitalization and automation. Digitalization implies changes in processes, in the working flows. These are difficult changes to implement in the energy sector, which is a standardized field that leads to a necessary conservatism.
We are in a fast evolving business area and can respond to challenges easily, through a rapid reorganization, but standardized distribution or transport operators, cannot act as fast. However, the big, private, or public energy companies have greatly increased their interest in this area, as automation and SCADA projects done so far have proven their effectiveness during this period.
Romania has not encountered major interruptions in electricity supply lately, because some of its infrastructure has been automated.
But the implementation level of digitalization is limited. I think that in the next period the utility companies will start effective projects in their core business operations. Projects have been done in the past, but in the next period, I hope, they will be done faster and in larger numbers,” the General Manager of Eximprod Grup added.
Eximprod is a Romanian group of companies with a history in innovation for 25 years, focused on the manufacturing, design and consulting, turnkey projects, energy automation and digitization areas for the utility sector.