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An Interview with DG Twin

December 23, 2022

DG Twin S.r.l. is an innovative startup, established in may 2021, authorized as a spin-off of the Italian National Research Council (CNR). The cleantech company strongly acts for sustainability, through the technological transfer of the research results achieved in the field of numerical modelling of energy systems to industrial production. Customer-driven engineering and artificial intelligence are applied to highly enhance energetic and environmental performances and especially to guarantee optimal services to users, in both the micro-grids sector and within the electrified mobility field.

Your PLATOON-funded project is INGRID: Involving hydrogen for a Greener and Innovative energy Deployment (INGRID). Can you tell us more about it?

 

The INGRID project was conceived by virtue of the widespread interest registered today in the use of hydrogen as an energy vector, strongly supported by various initiatives undertaken at a global level, mainly under the auspices of the European Clean Hydrogen Alliance. INGRID, therefore, prospectively focuses on the progressive deployment of clean hydrogen technologies within steady power plants. A plausible future scenario being considered today relies on low-carbon or net zero production of this gas and on its blending in the natural gas (NG) grid. On the other hand, it must be argued that existing NG-powered cogeneration units often work with periodic excess electricity output, whose provision to the network is currently suffering lower revenues due to either increasing fuel costs or worsening local incentives. Hydrogen seasonal storage is a valuable option, although its technical feasibility, without resorting to high CAPEX and OPEX, may be a matter of concern for existing plant operators.

 

Within the PLATOON initiative, the recently incorporated company DG Twin, a spin-off of the Italian National Research Council, proposed a re-engineered solution fitting the afore-said cases by involving original “digital twins” for cogeneration engines and fuel cells. The aim is to provide robust tools suitable to be employed by energy-saving companies, operators and even possible customers, to make proper techno-economical evaluations and gain information about improvements in energy efficiency and service continuity achievable through the embedding of hydrogen.

 

What do you think the greatest challenges will be in bringing smarter technology to energy management—and to the transport sector, in which your company is also involved?

 

The current worldwide scenario is changing at an unbelievably rapidly pace and is clearly modifying existing paradigms in many sectors, especially highlighting the need to consider the more rational use of energy resources as an essential commitment by any human, specifically to achieve flexibility and territorial resilience. Especially in Europe, the Russia-Ukraine war has jeopardised energy availability and critically stressed the importance of independence from other countries. The centralisation of the energy services, on the other hand, is an archetype that has also been somehow radically modified in recent times, due to the increasing inclusion of renewables, intrinsically spatially diffused and also inherently characterised by variability in time and related difficulties of management of energy availability and demand.

 

The climate crisis, on the other hand, has forced important decisions related to reduced use of fossil fuels also in transportation: electrification of mobility has become an unavoidable path, mainly within urban environments, ICT technologies have simultaneously changed mobility habits, and public policies more and more are facing with the request to enable significant results in terms of homogeneity of services offered to citizens, economic development for companies in the sector and benefits for the community and the environment. The concept of “Mobility as a Service” (MaaS) is growing and spreading, representing the compulsory will to improve a traditional field, such as transport, to offer users an increasingly agile, accessible and modern experience.

 

Dealing with such a huge and complex range of possibilities, needs and technologies are possible today due to digital technologies and their recognised role in increasing sustainability in different applications. DG Twin was indeed conceived with its motto “Towards sustainability through digitalisation”in mind, specifically focusing its business idea on digital technologies, especially on digital twins (on the name of the company is based). In order to achieve success, they may have to concretely release improved products and services in both the energy and the transportation sectors.

 

Effective smart technologies can be extremely useful in facilitating ongoing change, reducing the human carbon footprint on the planet, fighting against extreme climate events, and increasing resiliency at all levels.

 

Part of the award from PLATOON was an invitation to join the Technology Transfer Programme. How has this benefitted your company?

 

DG Twin was founded based on a consolidated background in numerical simulation, optimisation and artificial intelligence, just as a provider of innovative software components enabling a more rational use of resources and increased sustainability in its three dimensions: environmental, economic and social. The PLATOON initiatives gave the company the possibility to be involved in a concrete European action while having a great impact, and especially initiated a highly valuable cooperation with ENGIE and Politecnico di Milano. This resulted in both an affirmed industrial reality and a high-level tech and training centre to prove the effectiveness of digital products. The developed tools by DG Twin were released so as to be integrated into the digital platform architecture of the project, after a proper validation on Pilot #4A, the hybrid energy microgrid installed in Politecnico di Milano, just to show their capability to optimise the energy flows and reach the highest advantages in performance and profitability.

 

Participating in PLATOON, in other words, gave DG Twin the possibility to be a part of a proactive environment, where the exchange of knowledge and the availability of means habilitated a concrete example of open innovation, so to concretely contribute to the company growth and, in a broader perspective, to what will be the optimal energy management of future microgrids.

 

 

What do you think the most important achievements of PLATOON will be?

 

PLATOON is surely a milestone in the current energy transition. By proposing a concrete action towards the digitalisation of the future energy system, partners and also SMEs such as DG Twin that entered the community with the access enabled by the Open Calls, gave a correct interpretation to trends and diffused needs of more inclusive, affordable and secure energy provision and use. PLATOON kept its promises, and its achievements span a wide range of advantages; the most significant being key technologies and tools that were released at many levels for greener energy, the fight against energy poverty and smarter services.

 

The project was born in response to the rapid growth of energy consumption and the exponential increase expected in the coming decades (as a result of the growth of the world population and the augmented consumption by developing countries), the need for greener energy sources to combat global warming, the introduction of new technologies such as electric transportation and digital technologies and the related need to work on a large amount of information collected by new digital devices.

 

PLATOON’s realisations have today become a solid foundation on which to build improved energy access for all, in particular, to enable improved Energy as a Service (EaaS) and Mobility as a Service (MaaS) digital platforms.

 

In recent decades, service-based business models have, in fact, gained popularity across a wide variety of traditionally product-based industries. Energy service is instead an assessed concept, although, as said before, the sector is currently experiencing a fundamental transformation because of distributed sources of energy generation and the inclusion of digital technologies. Liberalisation paved the way for customers to turn into prosumers, producing on-site renewable energy and offering flexibility to the grid, to even reach the concept of a virtual power plant (VPP). Sector coupling, as integration with building heating and cooling or vehicle to grid applications, power-to-X technologies for energy storage or transformation into proper vectors, as hydrogen, will increasingly modify the original assets. In particular, self-consumption is projecting end-customers as strong contenders against the century-established utility business model dominated just by utilities in conjunction with intermediary providers for generation, transmission, distribution and system maintenance.

 

The interface between end-consumers and energy providers is usually defined by a long-term power purchase agreement (PPA) with end-consumers buying electricity as a commodity against a certain tariff. This conventional business model is no longer desirable, nor does it encourage buying electricity from utilities, especially if energy sources cost will increase prohibitively. Even diffused cogeneration with electricity sale to the grid is no longer a profitable business.

 

On the other hand, numerous possibilities are being habilitated for future EaaS models, many of which are getting feasible also due to advancements provided by actions such as the PLATOON project. As an example, many residential electricity customers today use smart meters tracking electricity consumption electronically, so to collect useful data on the demand side and, if applicable, also for home generation. Data gathering and analytics and advances in their management are providing new opportunities for service companies to help customers save money beyond what was achievable before. Future EaaS business models could likely involve energy communities with related energy management and billing through digital platforms interoperable with electric devices, water heaters or also owned e-bikes and cars.

 

Within industrial applications, the possibility that employees provide their company with the home-generated energy is not so far-fetched. This could be achieved by using their daily used vehicle as a moving storage system and the bidirectional electric connectivity to either give or receive benefits in terms of energy kilowatt-hours. It could also possibly play a part in improved welfare policies. Smart mobility hubs within cities are also a future matter of fact to intermodal transportation, certainly with digitalisation “orchestrating” the whole.

 

Such new approaches are consumer-centric and allow for saving money while providing societal benefits by better energy demand-response matching, integrating renewables, and reducing the carbon footprint on the planet.

 

The Team members of DG Twin are well conscious that entering PLATOON allowed them the opportunity to act as a part of this revolution.