Speakers

Keynote speech & Opening remark

Catharina Sikow-Magny

Director for Green Transition and Energy System Integration,
DG ENER, European Commission

Markus Kaune

Chairman of the Board of Directors and CEO ZSE
Chairman of the Board of Directors and CEO VSE Holding

Conclusions

Tomáš Turek

Member of the Board of Directors ZSE
Member of the Board of Directors VSE Holding

Radoslav Haluška

Chairman of the Board of Directors and Executive Director of ZSD
Chairman of the Board of Directors, and Chief Executive Officer of VSD

Panel I.
Developing smart grids projects for Energy Transition

Ricardo Renedo Williams

Policy Officer for Infrastructure and Regional Cooperation DG ENER, European Commission

Catharina Sikow-Magny

Director for Green Transition and Energy System Integration, DG ENER, European Commission

Rickard Venetjoki

Committee Chairman – E.DSO

Marian Rusko

Chairman of the Board of Directors and CEO of EG.D

Zuzana Kaparová

Head of the EIB Group Office in Slovakia

Stephan Gross

Technical Expert · EU DSO Entity

Panel II.
Searching for synergies/means to enable smart grids projects

Ona Kostinaitė-Grinkevičienė

Head of Sector, Unit CEF Energy and Renewable Energy Financing Mechanism, CINEA

Tomáš Manosoglu

Head of Subsidy management  EG.D

Simon Tot

Assistant Director of the Strategic Innovation Department ELES d.o.o.

Alberto Dognini

Scientific Researcher, Fraunhofer FIT

Mihaela Casacu

Deputy General Director of Delgaz Grid S.A.

Lukasz Sosnowski

Manager of external funds and R&D, Stoen

Vida Rozite

Energy Policy Analyst, IEA

ORGANIZED BY

PROMOTERS OF ACON PROJECT

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Vida Rozite

Vida Rozite leads the digitalisation workstream at the International Energy Agency’s Energy Efficiency and Inclusive Transitions Office including the Digital Demand Driven Electricity (3DEN) initiative, focusingon how digitalisation can accelerate power system decarbonisation and increase efficiency, security and resilience. She is the IEA liaison officer for the International Smart Grid Action Network. Previously, she led work on industrial energy efficiency and on digitalisation at the IEA, worked as an associate expert on resource efficient and cleaner production for the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, was a senior advisor for Nordic Energy Research managing international innovation collaborations and was the secretary of the Nordic Council of Ministers' Renewable Energy Working Group.  She was also senior advisor and deputy director of the Nordic Council of Ministers’ Office in Latvia managing a programme portfolio covering energy, environment and cross border collaboration. She has also worked in the fields of international trade and telecommunications.

Ricardo Renedo Williams

Ricardo Renedo Williams is a Policy Officer in the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Energy, at the Unit for Infrastructure and Regional Cooperation. Ricardo works on offshore renewables and grids as well as smart electricity grids. Previously, Ricardo worked at ENTSO-E.

Ricardo is an engineer with two master’s degrees.

Stephan Gross

Stephan Gross has 8 years of experience in the energy sector, specializing in RDI projects and digitalization activities. In November 2022, he joined the EU DSO Entity as a Technical Expert Coordinator. In this role, he oversees DSO Entity’s expert groups focusing on the Digitalization of the energy system and the Ten-Year Network Development Plan. Prior to this, Stephan spent 2 years at the Fraunhofer Center for Digital Energy where he coordinated the HE-funded project, "OneNet - One Network for Europe" and was involved in various HE funded RDI project proposals related to Energy Data Spaces. Prior to this, Stephan worked at the RWTH Aachen in various RDI projects touching topics like 5G, sector coupling, modelling, and storage. Stephan holds a Master of Science in Energy Engineering from the RWTH Aachen University in Aachen, Germany.

Zuzana Kaparová

She studied law at Charles University in Prague and chemistry at the University of Pardubice.

Zuzana worked in various positions at the Ministry of the Environment in the Czech Republic and for the European Commission in Brussels.

Since 2015, she has been working for the European Investment Bank, where she held various positions, such as ECS EIB/JASPERS Expert in Vienna and Environmental Specialist in Luxembourg.

From September 2023, he holds the position of Head of the EIB Group in Slovakia.

Łukasz Sosnowski

Manager of external funds and R&D department at Stoen Operator. Expert in the field of energy and external funds. Graduate (M.Sc.) of the Warsaw University of Technology, Faculty of Electrical Engineering.
Has extensive experience in the implementation of national and international investment and R&D projects in the electric power industry. Actively participates in the development of the energy storage sector in Poland and in the area of electricity distribution.

Mihaela Casacu

Energy engineer;  over 25 years of experience in gas and power distribution and supply

Since 2020 Deputy General Director Delgaz, in charge of power operations, leading the investments, operations and maintenance, strategy and process optimization areas.

From 2008 to 2020, led within DEGR the energy management division for both power and gas business areas. Previously, in various management roles within power supply business of E.ON Moldova in areas of customer relations, household and business market sales.

Alberto Dognini

Alberto Dognini received the M.Sc. degree in electrical engineering from the Politecnico di Milano, Italy, in 2014. From 2015 to 2017, he worked as Engineering Project Manager at ABB - Electrification Products Division, Dalmine, Italy, managing the revamping of medium voltage protection apparatus and switchgears. From 2017 to 2023, he has worked as Research Assistant with the Institute for Automation of Complex Power Systems, E.ON Energy Research Center, RWTH Aachen University, Germany. In 2022 he joined as Research Associate the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology (FIT), Center for Digital Energy, Aachen, Germany. He has been working in several German and European research projects, focusing on the development of energy services and automation systems to improve digitalization and resiliency of power system grids.

Simon Tot, M.Sc.

Simon Tot has more than 37 years of experience in the energy sector. He previously worked in producing electricity in the thermal and hydropower plants field. His main activities were the optimization of hydro and thermal generation and the provision of ancillary services.

He has been employed at ELES for the last six years. Its main tasks are the development of smart grids with an emphasis on the controllability of the grid with increasing flexibility of active and reactive power, increasing power flows, and flow control in the Slovenian transmission network to prepare it for the new challenges concerning the inclusion of increased amounts of dispersed renewable energy sources and new loads, such as batteries, heating pumps, e-mobility, etc.

Ona Kostinaitė-Grinkevičienė

Ona Kostinaitė-Grinkevičienė is Head of Sector for CEF co-funded electricity and smart grids projects at CINEA. Previously she was an energy diplomat representing her home country in the Council. She also worked in various positions related to the EU in the national administration and as a lawyer in private sector. She held a Master’s in European studies from Vilnius University and a Master’s in law from the Mykolas Romeris University in Vilnius.

Tomáš Manosoglu

Tomáš Manosoglu is Head of Subsidy management unit in the Czech DSO company EG.D, a.s. This unit is managing large scale infrastructure EU funded projects focused on deployment of smart electricity grids. Previously he was in the role of senior project manager of projects ACON smart grids and Gabreta smart grids. Both were listed on the 5th Union PCI list and ACON is co-funded from the CEF Energy program.

Marian Rusko

A passionate strategist and leader with thirty years of experience in managing organizations in international environment, particulary focused on Energy Business in CEE (Central and Eastern Europe). 

After his graduation at the Faculty of Economics at the University of Giessen and several years of working experience  in management in the financial sector both in Germany and the Czech Republic, he has joined the E.ON  company. In his professional career, he managed international projects and, later on, entire organizations within the E.ON group, especially in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Currently, he is a member of the top management of the E.ON SE Group. One of the Marian's key talents is to combine his strategical approach with change management with the aim of building new business opportunities.

Rickard Venetjoki

Rickard Venetjoki has extensive experience in the DSO industry in Sweden, specializing in revenue regulation and tariff design. Since 2017, he has been E.ON's representative in Brussels, where he works on political and regulatory topics, as well as EU projects. As an active member of E.DSO, he has represented the association in discussions around the newly revised TEN-E Regulation.

Catharina Sikow-Magny

Catharina Sikow-Magny joined the European Commission in 1997 and is currently the Director responsible for Green Transition and Energy System Integration in the Directorate General for Energy. Before that, she was the Head of Unit in charge of Consumers, Local Initiatives, Just Transition. Before that she was the Head of Unit responsible for Networks and Regional Initiatives. She has as well worked on international transport, trans-European network policy and financing, internalisation of external costs, and strategic policy research.

Before joining the Commission, Catharina Sikow-Magny was a team leader and chief economist in the private sector in Finland. She has also worked for the United Nations Development Programme in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. She holds a Master of Economics degree from the Aalto University, Finland.

Radoslav Haluška

Radoslav Haluška graduated in Electrical & Energy Engineering from Technical University in Košice. He started his career in Konex Elektro. In 1997, he joined ABB Elektro, s.r.o., Bratislava - first he served as a software engineer, later as a project manager, head of department, business director, and in 2003 he was appointed a director of energy facilities division. In early 2005 he started working for Východoslovenská energetika, a. s. He was in charge of network services and led the division until the end of 2013. In 2008, he became a member of the Board of Directors and performed the office until 31 March 2014. On 1 April 2014 he joined Východoslovenská distribučná, a. s., he was appointed the chairman of the Board of Directors, and later a chief executive officer. Since 15 March 2023 he has been serving as a chairman of the Board of Directors and Executive Director of Západoslovenská distribučná, a.s.

Tomáš Turek

Ing. Tomáš Turek, PhD. – member of the Board of Directors

Education: He graduated from University of West Bohemia in Plzeň where he was awarded a title of engineer, and a PhD title some years later.

Experience: His professional career is linked mainly to the E.ON Group for which he has been working since 2008. First, he worked for E.ON Trend s.r.o. which was a member of the E.ON Czech Group, responsible for managing activities of the E.ON Group in Czech Republic in the area of power generation, heat industry and local distribution businesses. In 2014, he joined Západoslovenská distribučná, where he was appointed a member of the Board of Directors and technical director. From September 2019 until 14 March 2023 he held the position of the chairman of the Board of Directors and Executive Director of ZSD, a.s.

Since 15 March 2023 he has been a member of the Board of Directors of VSE Holding. Simultaneously, since 23 September 2020 he has been serving as a Vice-chairman of the Supervisory Board of Východoslovenská distribučná, a.s.

Markus Kaune

Markus Kaune received his law degree after studies at Ruhruniversität Bochum (Germany) and at Rijksuniversiteit Leiden (Netherlands), with a subsequent bar exam. In 2011 he joined E.ON Energie AG in Munich as a lawyer, Legal and M&A-division, where he worked until 2005. During this period he was in the years 2003 and 2004 a member of the post-acquisition integration project team at ZSE in Bratislava. The years 2005 through 2008 Markus Kaune spent abroad at E.ON Bulgaria EAD, Varna and Sofia where he took the position of Senior Vice President Central Functions. From 2008 to 2011 he worked back in Germany as Vice President Portfolio Development and Central Eastern Europe for E.ON Energie AG, Munich. In 2011 he became Vice President Energy Networks, E.ON SE, Düsseldorf/ Essen and it 2017 he took up the position of Senior Vice President Energy Networks with E.ON SE, Essen. Along with executive functions, Mr Kaune has been a member of supervisory boards at E.ON Bulgaria EAD, E.ON Bulgaria Grid AD, E.ON Bulgaria Sales AD as well as the Supervisory Board of ZSE (2016-2020). Since 2020 he has been serving as a Chairman of the Board of Directors and General Director of ZSE, a.s. and Chairman of the Board of Directors of VSE Holding, a.s.