The sixth event organized by energynomics.ro in the series “Energy Efficiency for Big Results” brought together seven speakers in Craiova, representing all the relevant perspectives on the proposed theme. Over 50 participants have contributed to the success of a quality dialogue under the title „Energy Efficiency for Flexibility and Financial Sustainability”.

As it happened in all previous occasions, the conference was opened by a representative of ANRE, who referred to the legislative provisions on energy efficiency. In the last few years, Paul Popescu has constantly been in touch with local authorities and economic agents in the region to support their compliance with their obligations. “More than 90 percent of the economic agents observed the tasks they had under the legislation, mainly regarding the achievement of the energy audits”, the ANRE official said. Reactions from local authorities are less encouraging. For example, the municipality of Craiova has a program to improve energy efficiency, with measures to modernize the public lighting, with rehabilitation of public buildings and blocks of flats, with modernization of thermal points, but it did not appoint an energy manager, as requested by law.

Market trends push us to invest in energy efficiency

In his presentation, Liviu Gavrilă, COO CEZ ESCO Romania and authorized energy manager for the industry, has exposed the trends that influence the evolution of the energy market at European level and in Romania. “Everything changes, all over the chain, from production, transport, distribution, measure, to supply”, said Liviu Gavrilă, in order to put into context the increased involvement of a big energy supplier in the energy services market.

Specifically, CEZ ESCO Romania aims to provide integrated services to streamline energy processes in the business to business segment. According to CEZ’s representative, “a successful ESCO provider must simultaneously cover two roles: single service specialist and one-stop-shop to provide turn-key solutions to the specific needs of the beneficiary.”

DOWNLOAD THE PRESENTATION OF LIVIU GAVRILĂ

In the Romanian industry, at present, if the return of investment comes after more than 3 or 4 years, then it is not so attractive, and this makes larger investments such as co-generation or complex energy solutions seem “somewhat utopian”. However, “as energy prices grow, and technological advances require investment to bring about changes in operational flow, I think most owners of industrial businesses will think more seriously about investing in equipment in order to ensure higher levels of energy independence, sustainability, security and energy efficiency”, said Liviu Gavrilă.

Phoenix Contact Solutions for e-mobility

In turn, Cătălin Lepinzean, Business Development Manager at Phoenix Contact, presented the Phoenix Contact E-Mobility offer: components and solutions for AC and DC charging, customized charging infrastructure concepts, and innovations allowing for high power charging. ” What Phoenix Contact proposes is this mix – starting from components, through integration of the solutions and implementing some ideas through appropriate technical solutions”, explained Cătălin Lepinzean.

“While we do not produce turn-key stations, we support system integrators in Romania to build such stations. Such companies, with the support of Phoenix Contact, offer integrated solutions – both the stations themselves and the networks and hardware / software architecture necessary for data transfer and complex network administration”, explained Cătălin Lepinzean.

DOWNLOAD THE PRESENTATION OF  CĂTĂLIN LEPINZEAN

Referring to the most important trend found on the e-mobility market in Romania this year, Cătălin Lepinzean brought to attention the exponential growth of vehicle sales. “It’s true, we started from very small numbers, but we’ve received consistent signals from big companies that they are interested in building their own fleets of electric cars. There is, therefore, interest, and this will also stimulate the development of the charging infrastructure”, said Cătălin Lepinzean.

Enevo Group – Energy efficiency comes with investments in process sustainability

In turn, Cristian Pîrvulescu, General Manager of Enevo Group, referred to the major leap in the computing power, storage power and the emergence of robust automatic learning algorithms that exploit huge volumes of data to build patterns. “Progress in the development of prescriptive analyzes by using AI based on past events to predict future events puts the automation technologies in an innovative pathway,” said Cristian Pîrvulescu.

Enevo Group’s representative mentioned some of the products for energy quality and energy efficiency developed by the company in Saudi Arabia, such as power factor correction for Ar-Razi (KSA) and Hadeed Steel Plant KSA.

Referring to the maintenance strategies for critical equipment, the Enevo Group representative said that classical diagnostics techniques and methods are limiting and inappropriate for efficiency needs, as companies strive to reduce the number of failures, cut losses with unscheduled downtimes and expenses with maintenance. At the same time, Cristian Pîrvulescu also proposed a distinction between Big Data and Smart Data. “Manually collecting data consumes 80% of the time, and only 20% of the time remains available for data analysis”, he said. “Machine condition learning” solutions allow the acquisition and the use of a huge volume of data, including anticipation and avoidance of major operating incidents..

Alro – spectacular results in increased energy efficiency

Alro is one of the companies that thinks about energy efficiency before of and independent of national or European obligations, said engineer Sterie Florea, Research & Development Manager at one of Europe’s largest vertically integrated aluminum producers. With a turnover of 600 million euros in 2017, and more than 500 global customers, Alro is one of only 10 companies in the world capable of providing aboard for the aerospace industry.

For increased energy efficiency, the company has acted for reducing specific energy consumption, including through the use of innovative technologies. At the same time, Alro monitors energy consumption (electricity and natural gas) in real time through a system that allows for measures to address deviations. “We have a system that automatically sends a daily report on energy consumption per sector. Thus, directors and heads of sectors know whether any problems occurred and they decide where and how it should be intervened”, said Sterie Florea.

Among the actions already implemented by Alro, the company’s representative referred to the replacement of classical light bulbs with LED lamps, the installation of frequency changers to electric motors, and the complete integration of operations, with the realization of a mix of high added value products.

DOWNLOAD THE PRESENTATION OF STERIE FLOREA

The monitoring system allows the energy dispatch and also the production dispatch to track many indicators for each entity in the plant. “Every few minutes, consumption is compared with the forecasts for each sector, and the energy / production dispatcher takes measures to stay into predicted consumption, with no deviations”, said Sterie Florea. He added: “We are a consumer not to be ignored – 360 MWh per hour”, insisting that Alro should be treated as a large consumer with stable demand that ensures stability in the national energy system.

Optimizing costs for wastewater plants

In turn, Romulus Berdei, General Manager of Control Point, presented some of Valmet solutions for solids measuring in municipal and industrial wastewater plants. Based on over 40 years’ experience in the field, the Finish group Valmet can provide with equipment modified and optimized for answering the feedback from customers”, said Romulus Berdei.

Valmet’s advanced measurement technology and controls equipment optimizes costs in sludge dewatering systems across the entire process chain. “Depending on the characteristics of the system, investment can be paid back even in couple of months,” said Romulus Berdei, who then listed the benefits for municipal and industrial wastewater plants: fewer laboratory analyses, improved process stability, savings in time and chemicals used, lower need for instrument maintenance and reduced maintenance costs, more efficient energy consumption, and in the end improved capacity for the plant.

DOWNLOAD THE PRESENTATION OF ROMULUS BERDEI

Valmet is active in Romania through Control Point (Brașov), whose general manager, Romulus Berdei, has referred to some of their areas of interest in the present. “The equipment installed by the Valmet group two or three decades ago is still in operation in Romania, and we provide maintenance or audit services for some of them”, said Romulus Berdei. “At European level, for many years, we have been partners with Valmet in numerous projects, mainly in the biogas sector. We expect this kind of projects – waste to power, biomass, biogas – to start appearing in Romania once the legislative framework is clarified”, said the general manager of Control Point.

MET România Energy – ecosystem for each infrastructure

Andrei Bucur, Business Development Manager at MET Romania Energy presented the smart residential area of Popasului Residence, in Northern Bucharest, where each house was equipped with photovoltaic panels and smart home system, meant to ease the life of the user and at the same time to improve the energy consumption. “Photovoltaic panels come with a significant contribution to the heating of the house and a low cost in the utilities bill,” explained Andrei Bucur, who continued: “The smart house means more than automation and remote control of the artificial lighting, the air conditioning system or draperies”. In the case study presented, MET designed and implemented a connection between the heating system and the photovoltaic panels, so that in winter, the heating system starts on air conditioning and heats the building until the batteries are consumed. From that point on, the system shuts down the power supply and starts the system on natural gas, which is cheaper than electricity, for the moment.

Such an investment is less than 10% of the initial cost of building a new house, and the systems presented can also be used in existing buildings as their installation is minimally invasive, said Andrei Bucur.

DOWNLOAD THE PRESENTATION OF ANDREI BUCUR

With regard to energy storage, it is worth highlighting that technological solutions are being developed not only abroad. There are companies that produce here in Romania power generation and storage systems for energy. “Not only do others have access to such technologies, not just others have ideas and make investments in this sector,” insisted Andrei Bucur as an introduction to the partnership with Stratum Enclosures, a company which integrates renewable energy generation (wind, solar) with battery storage and power generators as a backup system. The systems are produced at the Bucharest plant and 99% of the production goes to export.

“MET România Energy has many solutions in its portfolio and we are doing more than just selling chargers for e-vehicles, for example. The complete package must include elements such as authentication and payment solution, a way for checking whether the charger is available or not, and some way to allow the charger to be used at any time of the day”, insisted Andrei Bucur presenting an integrated solution, “a mobile application that integrates payment by card in a Uber-type system”.

The event was organized by energynomics.ro, with the support of our partners: CEZ România, Control Point powered by Valmet, Enevo Group, MET România Energy, Phoenix Contact, Stratum Enclosures.

Following the success of the 2017 initiative, energynomics.ro unrolls its second media campaign for energy efficiency across the country! The campaign will run in the Romanian language, under the title  “Eficiență energetică pentru rezultate care contează“ – („Energy Efficiency for Big Results”) – a name which aligns concepts, information and solutions aimed to promote energy efficiency among the targeted audiences..

This is a communication campaign aimed at informing and educating the decision makers in the Romanian public authorities and companies – from Start-Ups and SMEs to the largest enterprises. The assigned objective is to positively influence their attitudes and behavior regarding the need for and the benefits of implementing in their organizations the energy audits and the needed actions and technologies for increased energy efficiency.

Participation

Access to the conference is open to all professionals in the Romanian energy industry and related sectors, based on the nominal confirmation from energynomics.ro. You are welcomed to write us at office [at] energynomics.ro and ask for an invitation!

Between February and November 2018 we scheduled seven conferences aimed to highlight the need for and the benefits of implementing energy audits, with examples of actions and technologies for increased energy efficiency.

Conferences scheduled in 2018 in the Communication Campaign “Energy Efficiency for big results”

• March 14, Iaşi – Efficiency through Automation and Energy Storage Follow-Up article
• April 26, Cluj-Napoca – Optimized energy consumption (storage, monitoring, industrial design) Follow-Up article
• May 22, Timișoara – Industrial automation and energy storage for energy efficiency Follow-Up article
• July 4, Constanța – Innovation and proven solutions for energy efficiency Follow-Up article
• September 18, Bucharest – Energy Efficiency – Best Practices and Future Scenarios  Follow-Up article
• November 14, Oradea – New energy efficiency tools (cogeneration, monitoring, automation)

Themes

• Public Sector – Exemplary role of public bodies’ buildings and purchasing by public bodies
• Metering and Billing – Operational, as well as potential specific technical topics
• Financing – The conditions required for the successful establishment of financing facilities
• Energy Services – Provisions to stimulate the development of the energy services market; energy storage; energy balancing; energy flexibility
• Consumer Information – Communication is a vital aspect of promoting energy efficiency
• CHP and Heating / Cooling – Assessment for the potential application of high-efficiency CHP and DH
• Obligation Schemes, Audits and Monitoring – Options for implementation and issues related to monitoring
• National Energy Efficiency Action Plans