The Future of the Turkey Energy Sector was Discussed by the Movers and Shakers of Energy Industry
11th Turkey Energy Forum was held on 27th-29th of January 2021 as an online event. Tens of distinguished speakers shared their thoughts and visions on the new era of the energy industry under the spotlight of pandemic and its effects. Green technologies with digital and smart grids were the main topics of interest during the event, as the need for paying attention to sustainability – in the environment and economics.
Digital transformation of the traditional business models was discussed in the Electricity Networks + Investing in Smart Infrastructure session
In the session, “Electricity Networks + Investing in smart infrastructure”, our CEO Alper Terciyanlı was also one of the speakers with three reputed experts (Serhat Can, Cezmi Bilmez, and Erdem Sezer) and the chairman, Can Arslan. Mr. Bilmez told about the latest developments and how markets operate in Europe and highlighted the importance of customer perception for the acceptance of new technologies. Mr. Sezer, as representing an electricity retailer, told about how they put the prosumers into the center of their business and transforming their conventional business models into new ones that fit into what the customers are looking for. As being well observed the last 10 years of the electricity distribution sector, Mr. Can summarized the results of the project done by MRC for EMRA, Turkey’s Roadmap for Smart Grids 2023, and pointed out the new technologies coming into the picture soon, hence the needs for the change of conventional approaches.
Dr. Alper Terciyanlı emphasized the importance of digital transformation in the energy sector
Mr. Terciyanli, during his speech, first underlined the risk of the gap between the technical staff and management teams that is actually the lack of alignment and cultural change which is very important for a successful digital transformation. Mr. Terciyanli also talked about their experiences in the Australian market and discussed the barriers in Turkey, avoiding a similar market structure and economy in digital solutions. He said that, according to their recent work in the west part of Turkey, more than 90% of the residential customers are ready to pay for digital solutions which will enable the end-users to monitor and then save their energy. However, as the fact that the lack of unified data exchange mechanisms, the market for behind-the-meter applications could not be rolled out by the companies providing these solutions.
