We were at the eFOCUS conference in Bratislava as a general partner

Our this year’s “conference series” had its finish on 24th November in our capital city at the event of the professional portal eFOCUS called: Smart metering/smart grid 2021 and the subtitle: The coming of the prosumer era based on secure data. We decided to support this conference as a general partner and, of course, we were happy to actively participate in the event. 

Key questions

At the expert conference we formulated, discussed and answered several key questions concerning the future of energy:

• What does the change in energy legislation bring in terms of digitalization and dynamization of the electricity market?
• How will the position change for customers interested in locally generating, storing, sharing or selling their surplus electricity or flexibility?
• What could this mean for the entire energy value chain?
• How prepared are the TSO and the market operator for the increase in the number and decentralisation of ancillary service providers (power balance services) and traders balancing their deviation through aggregated flexibility?
• Which new activities and services will be supported by regulatory measures?
• What are the options for reducing electricity costs?
• Do we know the framework for innovation in the energy sector?

Block I: Redesigning the energy market – the active consumer at the centre

The State Secretary of the Ministry of Economy, Karol Galek, outlined the basic direction of the new market design and the draft primary energy legislation in his introductory presentation.

Andrej Juris, Chairman of the Office for Regulation of Network Industries, discussed the issue of changing the position of consumers in regulation and the support of innovative solutions. He described the current state of preparation of the new regulatory policy, as well as the ongoing changes in the regulatory framework of the energy sector in our country.

The challenges of the transmission system operator in the new design were presented by Peter Dovhun, Chairman of the Board and CEO of the Slovak Electricity Transmission System.

Rastislav Nemec, Director of the Business Development Division of the Slovak Gas Industry, spoke about the transformation of the energy market and the need for a new business model in the conditions of SPP.

The guest from beyond the western borders, Martin Kubů, Director of the Renewable Resources Division of Agrofert Holding, presented the use of flexibility elements from the perspective of a prosumer from the Czech Republic.

Marián Smik, Chairman of the Slovak Battery Alliance, spoke about the market readiness of battery solutions and the market for battery solutions.

The expert presentations of Block I concluded with a panel discussion moderated by Blahoslav Němeček, a partner of EY’s energy advisory team in the CEE region, which lasted for more than an hour.

Block II: Data in the energy ecosystem (analysis, prediction, modelling and security)

Data, Patterns, Models is the title of the presentation that opened the second part of the conference. MicroStep-HDO’s Commercial and Technical Director Ivan Trup answered a key question in context: Are we ready for the increase in demand for data? According to him, the aggregation of flexibility in practice, new products for end customers, as well as the need for secure operation of distribution systems will require working with significantly higher volumes of data than at present.

Zsolt Géczi, FORTINET Regional Account Manager, presented Fortinet Security Fabric – a cybersecurity platform for digital infrastructure, suitable for the energy sector.

Tomas Rajčan, Director of Energy and Industry at IPESOFT, spoke on the topic Aggregation: present and new challenges. According to him, aggregation is technically possible today, but it has its limitations.

The presentation part of the second block of the professional conference was closed by Libor Láznička, Director of the Development Department of SFÉRA, who discussed the need for quality support of data exchanges for new players on the energy market.

The second presentation block was also closed by more than an hour-long expert panel discussion.

The pandemic has also disrupted the functioning of professional conferences…

…many could not be held at all, some were held online. And a few of them were held in a hybrid, i.e. virtual & in-person version. The eFOCUS Smart metering/smart grid 2021 professional conference was just a prime example – the prosumer era based on secure data is coming.

All those who could not attend the conference in person had the opportunity to watch the conference live stream in full HD quality. A multimedia recording and PDF outputs of the conference are available here.