Frequently asked questions

Yes, and often more so. Existing electric boilers usually run to a fixed schedule or sit there as back-up. The asset is idle instead of earning, and that is exactly where the opportunity is.

We bring your existing boiler into our control system, buy the power across the day-ahead, intraday and balancing markets, and run it whenever it beats gas on price. With no new hardware, that is the fastest route to a measurable result.

From there the system can be extended step by step: another boiler stage, thermal storage, a larger grid connection. Each step covers more of your heat load, and each one pays for itself. You do not have to electrify everything at once; you can follow the business case.

The commercial sweet spot is between 100 and 500 °C, where steam, hot water and thermal oil systems operate. That covers most industrial process heat.

Where usable waste heat is available, we add a high-temperature heat pump up to around 200 °C, which turns one kilowatt-hour of power into two to four kilowatt-hours of heat. Above 500 °C we look at each case individually, so please get in touch.

Yes, as an option. Thermal storage decouples generation from consumption: heat is produced in cheap price windows and drawn down later. That raises the share of electrification considerably and opens up the balancing markets.

At sites with their own generation, a battery can be added as well. Whether storage pays depends on the load profile and the price spreads, and we put a number on that in the feasibility project rather than assuming it.

For the electric boiler, Celsio. We take on procurement, the balancing group and market access for that consumption specifically. It is part of the business model: it is the only way the revenue from flexibility can be captured.

Your existing supply contract for the rest of the site is untouched. There is nothing to cancel and nothing to switch.

All the short-term power markets: day-ahead, where the base schedule is set against tomorrow’s expected prices, intraday, where prices move at short notice as the weather and the forecasts change, and balancing, mainly secondary balancing power, which pays for fast flexibility.

Our cross-market optimization works out, at every point in the day, which combination of the three earns the most.

Germany, principally: our trading strategy is built on the German price zone and the balancing markets that go with it.

Sites in Austria and the Netherlands we look at on request. For a company with several sites, we usually start with the one that has the largest steam demand and roll out from there.

Two things, because without them the calculation has nothing to stand on:

• your site, or the local electricity and gas network operators
• your heat load curve, measured on the gas or the steam side, over the last full calendar year

The answer gets considerably sharper with:

• the electrical load profile over the same period
• your grid connection capacity today, and what it could be extended to
• the basics of the existing steam supply: type of plant, minimum and maximum output, pressure, efficiency

Useful beyond that, but not a prerequisite: gas costs, carbon costs (EU ETS or the German national scheme), any reductions you hold on electricity levies (KWKG, offshore grid levy, § 28 ff. EnFG), reduced grid fees (§ 19 StromNEV or baseload), further relief such as the industrial power price or carbon cost compensation, and spare transformer capacity (400 V/690 V) for the electric boiler.

Whatever is missing we fill in with reasoned assumptions. The extra data improves the accuracy, but it does not hold up a first estimate: you can work out the order of magnitude yourself in a few minutes.

We check that as part of the business case. Sizing and grid connection are one question, not two: the right boiler output falls out of the load profile, the price spreads and the capacity available at the connection point.

In many cases the existing connection already carries a worthwhile first stage. If it does need extending, we are glad to walk the process with you.

Yes, your own generation goes into the optimization. In hours of strong solar output the boiler can draw that power directly instead of exporting it.

Our control system chooses at every point between on-site power, the exchange and gas. What that is worth at your site we quantify from your own generation and load data in the feasibility project.

What matters is not the level of the power price but its distance from the gas price. Our optimization runs the electric boiler only when heat from it costs less than heat from the gas boiler, grid fees, levies and carbon costs included. If power prices rise, operation shifts back to gas on its own. The site gives up savings, but it never runs more expensively than it would on gas alone.

And we earn on volatility, not on cheap power. The more prices swing, the more the boiler’s flexibility is worth and the more there is to earn across day-ahead, intraday and balancing. A higher price level with high volatility does not rule the model out.

So the business case is not run against today’s price alone. We simulate your load curve against a range of power and gas price scenarios, and you see in advance how the result holds up in different markets.

Yes, and they are often the difference between a good result and a middling one.

Every calculation runs on your actual site data: the grid fees of your network operator, electricity tax, levies, and the reductions you already hold or could qualify for.

On top of that come the physical facts on the ground: connection capacity, voltage level, space, steam parameters and your load curve. Which is why what you get is not a standard calculation but a simulation of your own operation.

None. We are not a boiler maker. We work with established manufacturers and EPC contractors who supply and build the plant; what comes from us is the optimization, the power procurement and the control.

Technically that covers pressures up to around 30 bar and sizes up to 70 MW. Which specification is right for your site follows from the load profile, the price spreads and the connection capacity.