November 22, 2019 by Luke James
POWER-GEN Europe is a three-day event for professionals working in the European energy market, offering a platform where energy sector stakeholders can meet, learn, and innovate.
POWER-GEN Europe is an annual event hosted by Clarion Events that organizes and coordinates the yearly exhibition that primarily consists of discussions and workshops for the promotion of “best practices” in the European energy sector. This year, POWER-GEN was held in Paris, France, and was co-located in partnership with European Utility Week.
European Utility Week is another annual event that brings together energy professionals. For the first time this year, POWER-GEN and European Utility Week came together to share their resources and contacts to offer a larger and more targeted event.
The main theme for discussions and workshops at this year’s event was distributed energy generation with topics such as gas-fired generation, renewable fuels, and hybrid power solutions. The other major theme was lifecycle management with topics including reusing coal plants, gas turbines, and plant optimization.
A photo of the attendees at the POWER-GEN Europe 2019 trade show. Image Credit: POWER-GEN Europe.
At the three-day event, several industry leaders were in attendance and presented projects for a low carbon energy supply. These included:
Solar Turbines
GRDF (Gaz Réseau Distribution France)
GRTgaz
RTE (Réseau de transport d’électricité)
Coneva
EnergyWorx
GD4S (Gas Distributors for Sustainability)
Gestap Energy Solutions
Kaluza (an Ovo company)
PowerPeers
Enel
Iberdrola Ventures
Here’s what happened throughout the three-day event.
The first day consisted of the event’s opening keynote and a preview delivered by POWER-GEN 2019’s Event Director, Paddy Young, detailing the end-to-end power and energy show.
Enlit Europe (formerly POWER-GEN and European Utility Week) announced the launch of its new unifying brand: Enlit. Enlit is the amalgamation of POWER-GEN and European Utility Week. The decision was made to merge the two distinct brands in response to changes in the industry and to meet the needs and demands for a single end-to-end event.
The next step for Enlit is to decide which of the 40 Clarion Events will fall under the Enlit brand. At present, Enlit Europe has decided that it will primarily target three markets—Europe, Australia, and South East Asia.
Of the several hundred exhibitors present on day two, it was an Amazon Web Services panel chaired by Ralph Kappelhoff of BD Power & Utilities Solutions that became a major focus. This panel discussed the development of future roadmaps for technology adoption more than three years into the future.
Other notable announcements came from Norwegian energy provider Istad Kraft and UK smart energy solutions firm ‘geo’ who have spent three years in partnership developing and designing an IoT heating and water solution.
It wasn’t all serious talks and announcements, though, though. Enedis had its own robot floating around that would follow attendees around the show!
On the third and final day of POWER-GEN 2019, Wipro Limited discussed how they collaborate with their utilities customers to help utilize smart meter data and empower the end-user whilst successfully addressing the pain of switching providers.
Hackabu chief executive, Lorena Skiljan, also gave a talk on how the energy sector could lead the way in ethical data use, a topic that is increasingly coming to the attention of consumers worldwide. This was one of several sessions on data use and analytics that took place at POWER-GEN, with Grid Edge, Bristol Water, South East Water, and Isle Utilities all chipping in.
The event wrapped up with a closing keynote. The topic discussed here was the future role of gas in the European energy transition with Eni SpA, Italgas, GRDF, and Eurogas all participating.
The next POWER-GEN event will take place in Milan between 27 and 29 October 2019.
