When energy is in place – but smarter control is needed

Promet-Plast is located in a beautiful area surrounded by green fields, close to the city of Oława. The company is near the A4 motorway and only 25 kilometres from the larger city of Wrocław, in the southwest of Poland.

– It is a nice location, and you see that we are on small hills. The hills are central for Promet-Plast when picking this location. Already before the Second World War, this area was known and used for wind energy from windmills, Adam Wąsiewicz explains.

Before the company started generating energy, Promet-Plast was an ordinary producer of plastic products.

– We produced different cups for the hospital branch. During 2012- 2014 we had very strong competitors on the German market from Chinese companies. Nobody knows exactly why the Chinese products are so cheap, because people are no longer needed in this production.

Adam Wąsiewicz, CFO at Promet-Plast, is enthusiastic about becoming a pilot in ELEXIA. The company is not new to the EU research system. It has previously been a partner in other EU projects. Its slogan is: “Full of energy from nature – zero emission zone"

– We have been operating for almost 47 years in the plastics sector. But plastic was only the start. Then we moved into energy, says Wąsiewicz.

ELEXIA is an EU Horizon project coordinated by NORCE. According to Wąsiewicz, ELEXIA is important to Promet-Plast because the energy market is becoming more complex.

– The energy market is constantly changing. Prices, weather and consumption all vary. So it is not just about producing energy, but managing and controlling it efficiently. We must avoid sending too much energy to the grid and handle many complex data sources. ELEXIA helps by collecting and processing this data to optimise how energy is used, stored and shared. It improves efficiency, supports business profitability and enables smarter energy decisions, he says.

He explains that global energy costs are uncertain, so the company invested in its own energy production through wind turbines and storage. Over the years, they have gained experience optimizing production, storage, and market use, which has reduced costs.

At the same time, he notes that relying only on producing and selling energy is risky. Therefore, they have shifted focus to better energy management and increasing self-consumption. Its involvement in ELEXIA has confirmed the need for a more advanced system for efficient energy control.

Tomasz Barszcz is Chief Business Development Officer at AMC TECH in Kraków and has played a central role in the ELEXIA expert team since the project started four years ago.

AMC TECH is an expert in the design and implementation of modern, high-quality consumer and industrial products. The company has supported the development of software, electronics and mechanics for more than 20 years. Its control, monitoring and diagnostics systems are used worldwide in industries such as e-health, e-mobility, smart homes, HVAC, power engineering, railways, oil and gas, and automotive.

Barszcz is the link to Promet-Plast. He follows up on the company’s needs and helps the ELEXIA team provide the right input to Adam Wąsiewicz and Promet-Plast.

Barzscz is happy that one of the forward-facing and green-energy-visionary companies in his country Poland, was chosen.

– They have windturbines. They have photovoltaics. They have battery storage and hydrogen generation. But what they are looking for is the overarching energy management system - a system which will be able to give them the real benefits of this intersector integration in the company. 

According to Barszcz, Promet-Plast is a perfect fit for ELEXIA.

– You could say that this is exactly the kind of customer we had in mind. Promet-Plast has all the building blocks, and they are looking for the overarching control system. That is exactly what we are developing in ELEXIA: a system planning toolbox and an energy management system. On top of that, we add an optimisation algorithm that can run at least once per day, or more often on demand, he says.

As a pilot in ELEXIA, Promet-Plast can use ELEXIA tools to generate energy profiles showing:

• how much energy the company should generate
• how much energy it should store
• whether it should shift its manufacturing load
• how much energy it should sell to the grid
• how forecasts for wind speed, solar irradiation and energy prices can support better decisions

Barszcz explains the complexity:

– What will the energy prices be? How much energy do they have stored? How much energy will they need for manufacturing? This is quite a multidimensional problem, and it is not easy. It is not something I would do in my head, he says.

ELEXIA is important not only for Promet-Plast, but for the whole energy sector. Adam Wąsiewicz explains that the energy sector has focused too much on production and too little on storage and management. This creates inefficiencies, even when enough energy is generated.

As Adam Wąsiewicz puts it:

– We concentrate more on generating energy than on storing and managing it.

He stresses that without proper management, even produced and stored energy cannot be used effectively. Therefore, systems like ELEXIA are essential.

In his view, the future of energy lies in intelligent control:

– Managing and creating efficient energy systems is the future of the electricity sector.

He concludes that ELEXIA is not only important for Promet-Plast, but for the entire energy industry, as it enables smarter and more efficient use of energy.