Energy Intelligence was set up ten years ago in San Giovanni in Persiceto (Bologna), a company applying technology to energy transition currently boasting around 30 employees and almost 200 clients with a consolidated turnover of €4.5 million. For FARE INSIEME, Giampaolo Colletti interviews Rodolfo Vignocchi, President of Energy Intelligence
by Giampaolo Colletti
@gpcolletti
Photocredit: Giacomo Maestri
There are years that mark our lives more than others. Years that get into our hearts and minds feeding desires, fears and actions. Years that leave their mark and act as watersheds and others that flow away slowly, almost undetected. 1973 is the year when our story starts: a year that marks a realization and that sparks off memories linked with moments difficult to face. These were the years of terrorism, those infamous Years of Lead we all know. This was also the year that marked the first global energy crisis, the year of the war between Israel, Syria and Egypt that drastically interrupted oil exports. The price of petrol sky-rocketed all over the world. Petrol stations all over the world displayed signs saying “No gas, no petrol”, unveiling the limits of a western economic growth based on abundance. Petrol as a weapon and a thirst for it that needed to be quenched in a different manner. We needed and still need a systemic response: Rodolfo Vignocchi, an engineer from Modena born in 1953 is convinced of it. Throughout his life, he managed some of the leading service companies between Bologna and Modena, and still does. He is now 70, but his business has a team of professionals with an average age of 31 working for him. Energy Intelligence is located in San Giovanni in Persiceto (Bologna) and currently boasts around 30 employees and almost 200 clients with a consolidated turnover of €4.5 million.
Company profile. It is a young business since it celebrated its 10th anniversary only a few months ago. Young and visionary, with a deep-rooted experience thanks to its founders. In fact, after selling the company in 2007, Rodolfo Vignocchi, Giorgio Bonzagni and Paolo Stanzani (a myth in the history of sports cars as he was a designer at Lamborghini in years when epic cars such as Miura and Countach were launched) decided to invest in the sector of sustainability and new energy with a research project: an experimentation lab in Fiorano. The objective? Exploring photovoltaics. The laboratory consisted in a photovoltaic plant that looked just like the others but which was actually made up of twelve different plants featuring all the main technologies available at the time. “We needed to collect and interpret data in real time and we couldn’t find anything available on the market, so we hired an IT engineer - Luca Bonzagni - who could build a system. That is how the cloud platform to collect data on energy flow and to compare the performance of different technologies was born and that particular IT engineer, who has also become an energy engineer, is our CEO”, says Vignocchi. That’s when the platform started to be commercialized and a control room was set up as well as a service centre to monitor the functioning of the systems providing the owners with monitoring, diagnostics and maintenance services. Combining digital with technical competence. “Research has been a constant. Over time, we widened our range of services and internal skills and focused on energy transition in companies and the control of photovoltaic and consumer energy flows”, stresses Vignocchi. So Rev-Up was born from a collaboration with the Universities of Modena and Bologna, a product that rebuilds the history of any photovoltaic plant in real time, also diagnosing performance thanks to AI. The system can also upgrade and extend the plant - also in real time - with relative Business Plan and pay-back time.
Technological and human capital. Contaminating competences. This is the mantra of the company, which includes energy and IT engineers. “The adventure stemmed from a research project that enabled us to work with universities and research centres, thereby gaining great experience. What amazed us is that the first to believe in the value of our proposal was not an owner of photovoltaic plants, but rather a large bank that had already financed many plants all over Italy and understood that they needed to work well to return the investment”, recalls Vignocchi. The company boasts a strong connection with the territory, considering that the targets are industrial businesses and Emilia-Romagna is the southernmost European region with the largest concentration of them and, therefore, with large energy consumption, availability of industrial roofs and excellent solar radiation. Energy Intelligence caters precisely for this industrial ecosystem, proposing itself as a partner to fully accompany the Energy Transition. Another research project will start soon in collaboration with Birex, an Industry 4.0 Competence Centre in Bologna. The objective is to design the database of the future capable of supporting the hefty amount of data that will become available over the next few years when the Energy Communities will also become available. Looking ahead with enthusiasm, professionalism and passion.
https://podcast.confindustriaemilia.it/
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