Turning the tables: TON’s journey from energy consumer to energy trader

TON is a world-leading bespoke furniture maker. The company prides itself on the quality of its products: meticulously crafted designs using sustainably sourced European beechwood. Having operated in the Czech Republic since 1861, TON blends its rich heritage with a forward-thinking approach to sustainability.

The challenge: hedging against energy price volatility

TON is committed to reducing its environmental footprint. To support this goal, the company wanted to get the most out of its solar PV assets. It aimed to achieve this by adding a battery energy storage system (BESS) and a powerful energy management system (EMS).

In addition to fulfilling its sustainability agenda, TON aimed to mitigate the impact of volatile energy prices. After these spiked, thanks to COVID-19 and the Russia-Ukraine war, they continued to cause financial uncertainty for the business as day ahead markets remained volatile after the crisis. Like many other industrial businesses, TON wanted to:

• Reduce their energy costs
• Reduce carbon emissions
• Hedge against energy price volatility
• Create additional revenue through energy trading

The Wattstor solution

Before engaging Wattstor, TON had already assessed several solutions. None guaranteed the level of visibility and monitoring of the day-ahead market provided by our AI-based EMS, Podium.

Podium can manage an entire energy ecosystem, ensuring it runs as efficiently and cost-effectively as possible with no human intervention. Using AI, Podium analyses current and future electricity market data, the company’s electricity usage, its energy system generation and storage capacity, and more. It then automatically manages all assets to minimise costs and maximise revenues from energy trading.

How does Podium AI work?

Convinced by Podium’s capabilities, and by the technical expertise of our local team, TON commissioned Wattstor to design and build a 1MW/2MWh BESS. This was divided into two equal-sized containers and connected to their existing solar array, onsite operations, and grid link.

On top of storing and optimising the energy coming from solar PV, the resulting energy system also facilitates energy trading on the daily energy market. This means that TON uses Podium to charge and discharge the batteries based on market prices, protecting itself from price spikes while maximising revenues from energy exports.

This is possible because Podium’s optimisation engine can forecast production from solar PV. It can also predict electricity consumption while considering local conditions, such as maximum reserved capacity and the technical parameters of the batteries. Based on these inputs, the system plans how to use resources efficiently. For instance, TON can export electricity when grid prices are highest, and charge its batteries with energy from the grid when prices are lowest.

Process

• 1MW/2MWh BESS installation
• Podium EMS integration
• Podium software customisation
• Whole system optimisation
• Support and consultancy at all stages of the project

Our local software team proactively listened to TON’s requirements and customised Podium’s software to ensure the client’s needs were met. We worked closely with TON as part of their team.

Results

Wattstor helped TON to lower its energy consumption during peak demand. This strategy goes by the name peak shaving – the Wattstor team also ensured that enough energy is generated and stored onsite. Load shifting is now also used to move energy use to times of lower demand. As a result, TON has achieved further cost savings and now makes much better use of available resources.

A picture says it all

The graphs below illustrate – using real data – how the entire energy management system functions over the course of a selected day. The top graph shows the live site status – including production, consumption, and battery usage. The bottom graph shows how electricity prices develop throughout the day.

• The green curve indicates periods when the battery was being charged – always during times of low electricity prices or excess production from the PV system, allowing efficient use of cheap energy.
• The red curve, on the other hand, represents battery discharge during times of high prices. This means the site is using stored energy from the battery instead of drawing expensive electricity from the grid, resulting in significant cost savings.
• The light blue curve represents solar energy production, which corresponds to the amount of sunlight during the day.
• The yellow curve shows the amount of electricity drawn from the grid. If this value decreases, it indicates that the site is using its self-produced energy from the PV system or stored battery energy. In the morning hours, the yellow curve gradually declines, indicating a growing share of self-consumption from solar production. Around noon, the curve reaches zero, meaning the site covers all consumption with self-generated energy. It stores any excess in the battery (green curve).
• The dark blue curve shows energy consumption, which the site’s production processes drive.

These graphs clearly demonstrate how smart energy management, combined with battery storage and photovoltaics, enables cost minimization and maximization of renewable energy usage.

Future plans

Thanks to the success of this phase of the project, TON is now planning to decarbonise its heating systems. At the moment the company relies on coal-fired boilers, yet wants to move towards cleaner options like heat pumps and cogeneration units. Discussions with Wattstor on exactly how to integrate and manage them are ongoing.

“Wattstor met all our expectations,” said Dominik Růžička, Facility manager at TON. “We are especially happy with their proactive approach and ability to think further in the future and develop solutions suitable for next steps. In our case, this means cogeneration units for heating, and possibly the use of BESS and EMS for ancillary services. Another huge benefit for us was their software team, which was able to customise Podium to our needs and we are still improving the system.”