Digitisation and energy saving with SENECA and Tecnalogic

At Vimercate, on the border of the Brianza hills, Tecnalogic was born, one of the most interesting start-ups in the field of energy, optimization and flexibility in energy and the environment.

After years of in-depth studies and experience in commodity markets, Tecnalogic has defined methods that allow the creation of "disruptive" software solutions and services that can fill information and communication gaps that exist today between producers and consumers, making dynamic supply chains today monolithic, encouraging the emergence of new business models and making available to all stakeholders the digital representation of energy and the environment.

More in detail, as far as the energy world is concerned, Tecnalogic has licenses for the use of patents granted at international level (Europe, US and Russia http://www.tecnalogic.com/it/ip/) through which it has been able to define a methodology for the optimization of electricity (physical/economic component) based on the programming of production cycles. This methodology includes the study and implementation of an ad hoc solution starting from the most modern technologies (IoT, Big Data, Data Science, Analytics, Enterprise 4.0, Smart Grid). Through the acquisition of energy data associated with consumption units (areas, lines, machines) and the processing of correlations with work plans, set-points, energy market Tecnalogic makes a reality the dynamic balancing of consumption of the entire plant through targeted interventions on individual units of consumption, all maximizing production and minimizing the risks and burdens arising from situations of over-consumption and under-consumption.

At the basis of this approach are the new energy flexibility policies that have opened up new scenarios in Europe. In Italy, Terna has launched a series of projects and assets for the dispatching service market, starting with the so-called UVAM (Virtual Enabled Mixed Units), which today represent the reference form of aggregation in Italy for non-relevant production units and consumption units on the electricity grid.

 

The implemented system

Technologic proposes Oratrios, the modular platform of electrical flexibility composed of 5 modules:

  1. Profiling
  2. Scheduling
  3. Balancing
  4. Data Analysis
  5. Settlement

The basic Profiling module is necessary for the hourly acquisition of consumption data, in order to identify the characteristic energy profile (i.e. the power consumption model) from large industry to small business. The acquired data is made available for local web access via simple and intuitive graphical interfaces. The platform is aimed both at consumers (industry, services), operators (Esco, Utility), the news aggregators (Balancing Service Provider, Consortia, Demand Side Response Aggregators) and is the basis for the creation of new energy communities formed by prosumers.

On the hardware side, the system is based on network analyzers and SENECA gateways for collecting consumption data. The choice fell on the three-phase network analyzers of the S203 Series and the multifunction gateways/dataloggers Z-PASS1 that support the VPN network for secure and reliable communications, the MQTT protocol to minimize bandwidth consumption and the OPC UA standard for full interoperability with third-party devices. The data are then ready to be sent to the platforms of the various market players / Terna with the communication protocol IEC 60870-5-104 supported by Seneca Z-PASS2-S-E controllers.

The platform solution is able to identify the distribution of consumption within production activities and the impact of electricity on the costs of the individual final product. This leads to the identification and balancing of aggregate energy profiles with a reduction in purchasing costs and energy consumption. In addition to all this, there is a more favourable access to the flexibility market, currently valued at up to 400 €/MWh (of which a share recognized by its operator), as well as the possibility of taking advantage of energy supply contracts and balancing services that can be pushed almost in real-time (with advance delivery time of 15 minutes) and, therefore, the possibility of seizing the best opportunities on the market, thanks to the active control of consumption of production systems.

Architettura del sistema tecnologico di aggregazione virtuale con hardware SENECA