From power plant to socket, ABB Romania aims to become a key player in the transformation of the national energy system. At the Energy Strategy Summit 2025, Mioara Brașoveanu, Vice President Commercial Electrification, clearly highlighted a theme that tends to become the major obstacle in the energy transition: the growing gap between the speed of technology development and the capacity of the infrastructure to integrate it.
“Today’s grids were designed for a different type of consumption and a different logic of energy production. Today, we are talking about decentralised power generation, renewables and the need for flexibility. The question is simple: how do we make room for the future in an infrastructure of the past?” asked Mioara Brașoveanu, at the 11th Energy Strategy Summit, the flagship event of Energynomics.
ABB’s response focuses on two complementary strands: integrating smart digital solutions into the existing network and prioritising infrastructure investment – a theme the company’s representative strongly supported in front of a technical but also strategic audience. The ABB Ability Energy Management platform is already deployed in several projects and provides an example of how digitalization enables the monitoring of energy flows, performance optimisation and predictive maintenance of critical network equipment.
While only 30% of the data generated in energy systems is currently being actively utilised, the remaining 70% remains untapped. For Mioara Brașoveanu, this is a loss of strategic opportunity: “We have huge potential. The data is there. The solutions are there. We just need to connect them.”
From ABB’s perspective, a decisive step is to equip the existing infrastructure with smart sensors that can be integrated into digital analysis and decision-making platforms. What’s more, Mioara Brașoveanu draws attention to another, less visible but perhaps even more serious gap: the technical skills gap. “We need real ambassadors for automation, both among utilities and in the industrial area. If we don’t bridge the know-how gap, we risk existing solutions being neither understood nor implemented to their true potential.”
However, Mioara Brașoveanu draws attention to a dangerous imbalance: currently, 67% of CAPEX on projects goes to technology and only 33% to infrastructure. “If we don’t balance this balance, we run the risk that the energy transition will remain a pipe dream. Technology alone cannot deliver the transformation without a grid capable of supporting it.”
In a balanced but insistent tone, Mioara Brașoveanu pleaded for a lucid and coherent acceleration of the energy transition, in which technology and infrastructure no longer evolve on parallel tracks. Only in this intelligent convergence can Romania hope to have an electricity grid compatible with the future that we are increasingly talking about – digital, electric and sustainable.
2025 Energy Strategy Summit was organised by Energynomics, with the support of our partners: AJ Brand, Elektra Renewable Support, ABB, Adrem Asset Management, Alive Capital, BCR, DEKRA, Distribuție Energie Electrică Romania, E-Infra, Eaton Electric, Electrica Furnizare, EnergoBit, Enery, Enevo Group, Enexus, European Investment Bank, Evryo, Exim Banca Romaneasca, Delgaz Grid, Genesis Biopartner, Huawei, ING Bank, Jantzen Renewables, Keno Energy, Leader Team, LONGi, Nano Energies, Prime Batteries Technology, Procesio, Procredit Bank, Relians, Renomia, Romgaz, Schneider Electric, script.ai, Sermatec, smartPulse, Solar Today, SolaX, Think Blu Solution, Voltika, Wiren, YEO, AIployees, Aqua Carpatica, Alexandrion, Carbon Tool, Imsol.