Industry
Industrial flexibility as a key to competitiveness and sustainability
The industry is facing enormous challenges: Increasing protectionism, CO₂ reduction, volatile energy prices, high grid fees and ensuring security of supply. At the same time, competitiveness on a global level remains crucial. As a market-leading flexibility marketer, ESFORIN supports companies in overcoming these challenges!
Individual grid charges in Germany:
Flexibility as the key to cost optimization from 2026
Throughout Europe, electricity flexibility is being sought in the expansion of renewables in order to facilitate integration. Germany has a very strong focus on renewables and therefore needs to expand its Adapt market rulesto promote flexibility. The Federal Network Agency is planning to realign the individual grid fees in accordance with Section 19 StromNEV from 01.01.2026. A flexibility component is to be introduced in addition to the current band load criterion.
The Grid fee reduction is independent of the physical path to the nearest power plant and is intended to reward dynamic consumption behavior based on the price development of the day-ahead market. Companies should make greater use of electricity during periods of high feed-in from renewable energies - such as during a "light breeze" - and reduce consumption during periods of scarce capacity, such as during a "dark doldrums".
This market-oriented behavior not only leads to a reduction in grid charges, but also offers the opportunity for industrial consumption and generation flexibilities to benefit from the Price volatility of up to €185,000 per MW and trading direction per year on the short-term electricity market. At the same time, with our algorithm-based flexibility marketing, we help our customers make a significant contribution to CO₂ reduction to perform.
Find out more now from our experts for flexibility marketing in the industry!
End-to-end platform bundles energy management
When it comes to energy procurement and management, industrial companies are under constant pressure to act flexibly and cost-efficiently. After the 2021/2022 gas crisis, securing new full supply contracts initially appeared to be a stable solution. However, these rigid constructs quickly reach their limits when companies take steps towards self-supply or flexibility marketing.
Even the integration of a PPAs or a new rooftop PV system can entail considerable forecasting and automation requirements, which pose major challenges for some full-service providers. Furthermore, the questions remain:
How can industrial companies participate in the extreme prices on the intraday market?
How can an industrial company exploit all stages of the value chain in short-term electricity trading, from day-ahead to continuous intraday, if all the flexibility is already booked in the balancing energy?
Example: Flexibility marketing of an electricity consumer
For example, an industrial customer regularly notifies us of 6 MW of flexibility for its production plant in both trading directions for certain quarter-hour products in the intraday. This was also the case on day D for 8:15-8:30 a.m. Our individualized algorithms then traded the 6 MW on the intraday market of the electricity exchange from 4 p.m. on the day of the presentation (day D-1) within the plant-specific restrictions. During this period, over 30 trades were traded up to gate closure for a single product of this type. In the end, the customer did not have to follow his plant on this day. As a rule, there is only an actual physical fulfillment in 30 % in our portfolio average of all customers, but was only able to reduce his energy costs by around € 225 in this quarter of an hour through trading transactions. At the same time, this system has made an active contribution to grid stability and indirect CO₂ savings.
E-boiler marketing for industry: Electrify. Decarbonize. Use flexibility.
Industrial companies use e-boilers to generate process heat efficiently and with low emissions. E-boilers are ideal as a summer system to take advantage of low or even negative electricity prices. In the cold season, a gas-fired boiler or a gas-fired power plant supplements the supply and ensures that a stable heat supply is guaranteed even at high loads. This creates maximum flexibility between electricity and gas options in order to optimally balance costs, CO₂ emissions and security of supply. E-boilers lower the CO₂ footprint and reduce dependence on fossil fuels and are therefore a decisive step towards a sustainable and future-proof heat supply.
Use battery storage in industry!
The expansion of battery storage systems is progressing in Europe. Falling cell prices are enabling more and more business cases. The spectrum ranges from household storage systems for optimizing self-consumption of PV systems to grid boosters operated by TSOs to increase the quality of supply.
There are also a number of use cases for the industry, a selection of which is listed below: optimizing the self-consumption of renewable energies in the customer system, peak load reduction or grid fee optimization towards an individual grid fee, increasing the quality of supply such as voltage maintenance, physical compensation of forecast errors of a completed PPA ("as produced profile"), the use of remaining free grid connection capacity to manage a stand-alone battery storage system on the trading and balancing energy markets, and much more.
Some of the use cases can also be combined, but this must be taken into account in the metering and measurement concept in coordination with the responsible connection grid operator and "jumping" between the marketing forms has not yet been approved by the regulator.
