Hidroelectrica is and will remain a 100% green company, and now the problem of its engineers is the integration of the park purchased from Steag in the company’s portfolio, said the company’s CEO, Bogdan Badea, during the 7th edition of the Energy Strategy Summit, an event organized by Energynomics.
“We are a 100% green company and we will maintain this 100% green profile, the natural step we managed to take was to diversify our activities in the green energy area. We are glad that, in the middle of the pandemic, in 2020, we managed to finalize the transaction with the wind farm acquisition from Steag, of which we are very proud, which works in parameters and we must integrate this production capacity in the Hidroelectrica portfolio. It’s a technical challenge – it’s a novelty for my colleagues, who have been used to operating only hydroelectric power plants and we will speed up the pace. The company’s strategy is to move forward with the development of green projects – here, of course, the most natural developments are in the area of photovoltaic parks, in the area of new wind-based capacities – especially since Hidroelectrica has the largest balancing capacity in the national energy system, and then the synergies that are achieved between technologies help us to obtain a clearly superior performance compared to other players,” said Badea.
He also said that a great market challenge is the lack of human resources. Many companies have been involved in training new energy professionals and in dual education. “We started a campaign to rejuvenate the staff … in the pandemic, many employees handed us pension decisions …”, said Badea, explaining that many employees avoided entering isolation, during the pandemic, at work and preferred to retire early.
“A second big challenge is given by the digitalization process … We are preparing this digitalization process, we understand that, with the coupling of the markets, the competition will be more and more fierce, I don’t think it is the case for any Romanian company to lie on one ear, saying ‘yes, it’s good what’s happening now, we have a market share of 30%, we’re on an upward trend, we have some very good results’, because we saw in the past what happened to others operators with this mentality and it’s a matter of time – if you do not take action in time, you may at some point be suffocated by competition, by new challenges, and we do not want this to happen at Hidroelectrica. Starting with this year, we will have some very concrete actions in terms of restructuring and optimizing the production process, in parallel with the process of diversification and professionalization of the staff …,” he added.
Badea announced Hidroelectrica’s intention to invest in new technologies, such as hydrogen. “This is the future,” he concluded.
