Talk Community Interview: Sandra Trittin
What do you see as the biggest opportunity for the energy industry?
The two biggest opportunities for the industry are still decentralization and digitalization.
On the decentralization side, it gives the opportunity to grow supply and demand capacities, which are often financed by the customer like solar, batteries, e-car charging stations. They are continuously growing and are significantly supporting the energy transition.
With the digitalization it opens the possibility to connect all these assets and use them for different kind of purposes. At the same time new business models, services can be developed and strengthen the customer relationship and open up new opportunities.
What do you see as the biggest threat to the energy industry?
One of the biggest threats is "slowlyness" and stagnation in decision making for new business models and technology.
This development is quite similar to other infrastructure and public services industries, where the development of technology and the change to decentralization are pushing new technology lifecycles and decision making timelines.
In the past, with almost no competition, centralized energy supply and only conventional power systems, there was no need to change and adapt quickly. The timing was given by the industry. With the increase of renewable energy supply, self-independent decision making of the prosumer and the development of decentralized grid structures this has changed. Now it is the customer and technology who create the faster pace of the industry.
What are the key topics you will highlight at this year’s EUW?
The key topics we see this year are e-mobility and the optimization of charging processes in favor of customers, utilities and grids. Furthermore, cybersecurity is getting increasingly important. Decentralized Resources like batteries and also Virtual Power Plants, were up to now only in the capacity of a few MW. But now they are continuously growing. Security is, therefore, playing a more important role, defining the security of supply in the future.
