“If we make the power grid more stable together, we will all benefit”

Energy prices are currently falling, but the sky-high rates for electricity and gas have recently caused a lot of headaches for industrial parties in the Netherlands. Companies such as Hoppenbrouwers Techniek started working themselves to save significantly on their energy bills. The technical service provider also developed new products for its customers based on new insights. During the Energy in Industry event on June 20, Dick Klaassen, system integration project leader, will discuss how they approached this.

By: Dimitri Reijerman

The energy crisis, which is still unclear whether it is finally over, has shaken up the industry: electricity and gas consumption must be reduced, and quickly. Parties such as Hoppenbrouwers Techniek are responding to this, says Klaassen: “We see that there is a great need for new services. Because reducing energy consumption is becoming increasingly important and customers also want integrations with all kinds of software systems. As Hoppenbrouwers, we have started investing in this. An R&D team has been set up to see how we can get the necessary knowledge within the organization.”

“We need a living lab for this, a learning environment. And what could be easier than using your own business premises for this? Hoppenbrouwers Techniek has 25 buildings at 22 locations throughout the Netherlands. We started excluding those buildings from each other to see what data we could get from them. This allowed us to determine how we can make these branches more energy efficient. At first that was still fun. But when we were presented with our new energy bill 1.5 years ago, we paid almost ten times more.”

Purchasing energy dynamically

Hoppenbrouwers decided to purchase electricity and gas in a different way, says Klaassen: “We ended up with a provider that charges dynamic energy rates. Until then, we paid a fixed amount per month, but with dynamic pricing you receive the current energy rates 24 hours in advance. That's what we started focusing on. The goal was to place our energy needs before or after the energy peaks. We have set up our installations accordingly and this has yielded significant results: up to 50 percent savings.”

“As an example: all our new cars are electric, because we want to be the most sustainable installer. This has quite an impact on our energy consumption. Many cars are connected to the charger around 8 a.m. and need 3 to 4 hours to fully charge. From now on, we started charging our cars between roughly 10 a.m. and 3 p.m., depending on the day's forecast. We did the same with the heating by turning it on at 6 o'clock in the morning.”

In addition to smartly responding to different energy pricing, there are other options to reduce costs, Klaassen believes: “More is possible than just dynamic energy prices, because if a lot of wind and solar energy is available, you are paid to absorb energy. And in the event of energy scarcity, you can switch off installations again. You can also store sustainable energy from the grid in cooling installations, heating buffer tanks or battery technology. You can also make money with that. And with the right certificates for green energy you can climb higher on the CO2 performance ladder.”

New energy saving products

The findings from practice provide Hoppenbrouwers Techniek with new products and services. Klaassen: “We are now putting the finishing touches on an energy monitoring dashboard. This allows you to initially build an energy profile of the assets you have. And based on these profiles you can deploy a 'plan of attack'. And new services are constantly being added within this portal.”

“There has certainly been an enormous need within the industry to deal with energy consumption more intelligently. We focus, among other things, on the food industry, where a lot of cooling and heating takes place. And those are precisely the most energy-consuming processes. There is a huge revenue model if you use these systems in the right ways. You also see more and more instability on the power grid, which gives you more opportunities to get money back when you take energy from the grid. Negative energy prices then arise.”

“As an industry, there is a huge opportunity here if we are flexible. And not only to benefit financially, but also to support the entire energy transition. Because if we make the power grid more stable together, we will all benefit.”

Do you want this lecture to attend? Register for free for the Energy in Industry event.