Andrei Secelean, Siemens Romania: “A deep rethinking of the power grid is needed”
“Siemens is a global technology leader and offers products, solutions and services, hardware and software for electrification – power distribution, automation and digitization. Siemens Romania has 2,400 employees, 2 research and development centres, 4 factories and experienced sales and project implementation teams.
Regarding the ingredients needed for a successful photovoltaic project, things are much more complex than an individual photovoltaic farm analysis. If I were a photovoltaic park developer, I would think about developing it in a close industrial area, next to a possible industrial consumer, to maximize the opportunities,” Andrei Secelean, Head of Smart Infrastructure, Siemens Romania said during Energy Efficiency for Sustainable Business Conference organized by The Diplomat-Bucharest.
In large industrial projects, beneficiaries cannot afford to compromise and usually prefer robust and stable technology. As such, a larger PV project must also be equipped with high-end technology.
Siemens can provide all the necessary electrical and automation equipment from the combiner box to the medium or high voltage connection.
The control of the output of the photovoltaic park is very important and can be successfully implemented with a Siemens microgrid photovoltaic plant controller. Speaking of Microgrid, we can extend the discussion to Virtual Power Plant, which can include a wind farm. This brings us to the concept of Sector Coupling, which should be the concern of every community.
A deep rethinking of the system and the power grid is needed. In 2020, more than 5 million globally distributed energy sources were added to the electricity grid. This number is expected to reach 35 million in 2030. Accommodating these sources in a network that was not designed for this can lead to congestion, loss of system inertia and, in the worst-case scenario, even blackouts. Development of transmission and distribution networks, in conjunction with major investments in automation and digitization are necessary for network operation. We have many projects already implemented: meter data management, meter data collection, smart metering, etc. that help distributors have better visibility, control, and reduce their costs.
There is a market of 10 billion euros globally for grid software and in 5 years it will reach 18 billion euros. Siemens invests heavily in digitization solutions based on the digital twin concept. At the moment, Siemens is able to create a complete digital twinof a power grid, a building, a factory, to collect from the real environment all the information provided by sensors and analyse it with artificial intelligence algorithms to make predictions of the future behaviour, with the goal of energy efficiency and improved operations.
Full recording of the conference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQNzpukqtgQ&t=6951s