The future of utilities is linked to the 3D strategy: Decarbonization, Digitalization and Decentralization, said Doina Vornicu, Chief operating Officer CEZ Romania during the conference “The future of utilities – challenges and opportunities”, organized by Energynomics.
“The future of utilities is certainly digital: all today’s processes need to be improved and have to move to the top level of digitization and robotization. Within CEZ group we have been starting the process called Smart transformation – we set out to transform all these companies into smart, and we started the process of smart measurement, upgrading how the electricians work in the field. Our Mobile Workstation Management has been in operation for over a year now, and our electricians have befriended the tablets, making all operations and maintenance processes much simpler.” At the same time, the electrician can announce online the status of the work, said Vornicu.
“We have set out an ambitious program for smart measurement; in three years we will install 400.000 smart meters at consumers in the Oltenia distribution area. Remote management of SCADA systems is a program that we will complete in the coming years. Today, more than 100 transformation stations are run directly from distance and we intend to complete this program by 2023. Moreover, we have robotized other processes – we already have two robots, one in the supply area, and another for human resources, developed in-house, that achieve 10 times the performance we had previously,” said Doina Vornicu.
“The pandemic forced us to jump ahead. We have introduced the process of electronic signing, and 1,000 employees have their own VPN addresses and work from home. All these automated and robotic processes are for the benefit of the customer and contribute to efficiency gains,” added Vornicu.
CEZ has also involved in the Casa Verde program for prosumers, with a national acceptance rate of 70% in the files submitted to the Environment Fund Authority (AFM), and so far around 30 prosumers have already been connected to the grid.