News
ProCom-Users´ meeting 2011: Eventful times! |
20.10.2011 |
Aachen, October 2011 – In line with the event motto “eventful times“ this year´s ProCom-users´ meeting took place in the business centre of the MS Motorsport GmbH in Kerpen. Where Formula-1-world champion Michael Schumacher did his very first laps, more than 60 ProCom customers, partners and prospects assembled on the 28th and 29th of September for speeches, discussions and professional exchange about current energy-related issues.
After a warm welcome the two managing directors of ProCom, Andreas Nolden and Max Scheidt reported on what ProCom moves: They indicated the interdependencies around the nuclear phase-out as well as the upcoming market issues from ProCom´s point of view and presented an outlook on the herewith resulting roadmap of the IT-platform BoFiT.
Also Dietriech Neumann, Vice President at A.T. Kearney GmbH, Berlin, indicated how much the energy industry is on the move. He explained a recently undertaken study on the future of the energy industry, for which dealing with uncertainties will become a central challenge. Under uncertain conditions staying mobile and keeping flexibilities is most essential.
The concrete value of flexibilities and the way to evaluate them coherently on the basis of the IT-platform BoFiT were shown by Dr. Florian Kämpfer, BKW FMB Energie AG, Bern, in the first practice-oriented speech on the topic “Assessing optionality of flexible power plants“. Afterwards, Jan Smolka, Trianel GmbH, Aachen, demonstrated how to work out decision-making basics for long-term power plant investments in turbulent times. The fact that important decisions considering complex conditions can also be found easily, was proven by Christoph J. Schmitt from the public utilities of Saarbrücken. As a public utility with a network, but without self- generation and energy customers, the Saarbrücken-team was able to optimise the district heating management with a ProCom solution. This was followed by a decision to re-enter in own energy generation.
After extensively discussing the movements of the energy markets, the users´ meeting participants were allowed to get themselves into move and prove their racing-skills in the “Kerpen Grand Prix” cart-race. Divided into 14 teams, they speeded in the competition for the best time over straight lines and through sharp bends. In the end the team consisting of Daniel Manske, Heinz Nusser, Michael Oeser and Max Scheidt was able to beat its competitors. At the subsequent barbecue in the greenery the racing drivers talked for a longer while about acceleration, cornering and the ideal line.
The second day of the users´ meeting was wholly dedicated to the dialogue and professional exchange. Among the choices where workshops to energy-related topics, such as “balancing energy markets”, “decentralised generation”, “processes between trade/ production/ sales” and “investment evaluations” as well as workshops concerning the IT-platform BoFiT, such as “time series management” and “model/ variant/scenario“. A short intermediate result of last year´s feedback session and a market outlook on our future market design considering the question “Do we need capacity markets?" given by Arnim Michels, BET, completed a successful event.
"We are very pleased about the many positive responses to this year´s users´ meeting, which confirm that we could offer our participants two diversified and eventful days“, says Judith Kießner, Marketing Manager at ProCom. “Beside the cart-race, especially the good atmosphere and the possibility to engage in a professional dialogue were very much appreciated.”
