Shifts at Ringkøbing Fjernvarmeværk are divided between five people, each with a one-week shift, i.e. there are four weeks break between each shift. In order to establish a clear framework to plan operations, it was decided to procure the decision support tool: eneregyTRADE. The energyPRO system was procured for budgeting and analyses for the future.

Using weather, energy price and consumption forecasts, the energyTRADE system proposes a production plan, whereby the production equipment produces the cheapest heat at a given point in time. Ringkøbing Fjernvarmeværk also uses the energyPRO system to budget and to analyse whether it would be a good investment to build new equipment in the future.

A digital twin of the production equipment is made in EnergyTRADE. Automatic actions are set up to retrieve weather, energy price and heat consumption forecasts. The model optimises operation of the production equipment, so that district heating is produced at the cheapest possible price based on the forecasts. The system can automatically register the production plan for the production balance responsible (PBA) – the company responsible for the delivered electricity production – if you trust the program enough. EnergyPRO works with statistical data.

This could be average data for the entire industry, or own historical data, used directly or in corrected form to reflect the future you believe in. Perhaps you expect the fuel price or heat consumption to change, and in this way the system can provide its best bid on how best to use the plant’s production equipment to get the most out of it, and the effect on finances. For Ringkøbing Fjernvarme, this has resulted in easier and more uniform planning of day-to-day operations. The plant personnel can relatively quickly analyse the financial effect of large fluctuations in the market.

“With energytrade, we can plan production, while energypro helps us with analyses, but the computer doesn’t have a sixth sense. It may be necessary to change the program’s proposal if you sense that regulation is on the way!” – Martin Halkjær Kristensen, Ringkøbing Fjernvarmeværk