Helen Ltd BFM 79

HELEN LTD.

DRIVEN BY THE CUSTOMER

HELEN LTD.

WE LEARN HOW HELEN LTD IS HEADING TOWARDS A CARBON-NEUTRAL FUTURE BY MEETING THE NEEDS OF THEIR CUSTOMERS TODAY.

DRIVEN

BY THE CUSTOMER PROJECT MANAGED BY: DAVID TAVERNOR

Helen is an energy company that operates all over in Finland, the company has also invested in European energy-related startups. It’s the second-largest energy company in the country with 1 billion euros of revenue and 1,000 people working for it alongside a network of partners.

Juha-Pekka Weckström, CEO & President of Helen Ltd.

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“W

e have both our own production and production through associated companies across the board,” says Juha-Pekka Weckström, Helen Ltd.’s CEO. “That includes versatile heating production with heat pumps, biomass, wind power, hydro and nuclear power, and today also still partly with fossil fuels.

Helen is committed to becoming carbon neutral by 2035. We are a fully-fledged energy company with almost 550,000 electricity customers and 1.7 million Finns use our services in their daily lives.”

Helen Ltd was founded in 1909, and so brings a wealth of experience to their work.

The company has been doing that work in Finland’s capital, a

hot spot, and produces district heating, districting cooling and electricity alongside all other solutions demanded by households and corporates in the country. In all that time, what separates Helen Ltd from other energy companies, even in the renewables sector, is how the company is driven by its customers.

“Helen was founded by the City of Helsinki to ensure warmth and light - district heating and electricity - for the citizens,” comments former CEO Pekka Manninen, who retired last Spring. “Now Helen, together with the entire energy sector, is transforming. The new carbon neutral and customer-centric strategy provides the backbone to succeed in the future.”

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Turning waste energy into added value Friotherm engineers, manufactures, installs and services heat pumps and chillers with technologies and solutions that help clients to improve their business. Friotherm is recognized as the only European manufacturer of centrifugal compressors for heat pumps and chillers.

The activities of Friotherm are supported by a world wide sales & service network.

Friotherm specialities: Heat pumps and liquid chillers District heating and district cooling High temperature applications Energy recovery from waste water Energy recovery from flue gas cleaning Ground and surface water exploitation Industrial waste heat recovery

Friotherm AG Langfeldstrasse 104 CH-8500 Frauenfeld, Switzerland Tel: +41 (0)52 724 77 00 E-Mail: info@friotherm.com

www.friotherm.com

FRIOTHERM AG YOU NAME IT – WE BUILD IT! Friotherm is founded 2005 from a management buyout, building on 127 years of successful refrigeration history, which began with Sulzer Bros., Winterthur, Switzerland. Today based in Frauenfeld, Friotherm is the only European manufacturer of a complete series of turbo chillers and refrigeration systems (Unitop®) for use as high performance liquid chillers and heat pumps, with Branch offices are located in Brazil, China, France, Germany and Sweden.

Swiss pioneer companies were the first to realize functioning heat pumps, with the first installation delivered by Sulzer for the Zurich town hall in 1938, an installation that is still in its original place today. Sulzer did start the refrigeration business in 1878, with the first Unitop® centrifugal chiller following in 1958.

Detailed knowledge of the dynamic processes of turbo compressors for more than 70 years, an in-house development group and realistic simulations of the overall system behaviour enable Friotherm to realise customer-specific optimised solutions.

Friotherm’s customers for heat pumps are mainly companies from the energy sector and large municipalities. Installed 2006 in caverns beneath Helsinki’s Katri Vala Park is the world largest heat pump plant to produce heat and cooling. The plant’s capacity is 105 MW heat and 70 MW cooling and it exploits heat from purified wastewater. In 2021 and 2022, with 3 additional Unitop 50FY heat pumps, Helen is increasing the capacity of the Katri Vala plant by almost 45%. The carbon dioxide emissions of the heat pumps are 80% smaller than for heat production plants of identical capacity, burning heavy fuel oil or coal.

A plant of comparable capacity equipped with Unitop® heat pumps from Friotherm is operating in Stockholm since 1985, using seawater as heat source. “Show me a client who would upgrade off the shelf chillers or heat pumps after 15 years and then again after 20 years!” says Frédy Burkhalter, CEO of Friotherm. Continuing, he says “All our installations are tailor-made, how else could we otherwise meet our client’s real requirements?” adding “the top quality in combination with highest reliability and longevity of our Unitop® heat pumps are the corner stones of our success”.

In addition to other industrial applications, district cooling is becoming increasingly important over the last years. Unitop® chillers from Friotherm serve the district cooling supply systems of various cities in Europe, including Paris with its famous places like the Louvre, George V and the Opera.

Frédy Burkhalter CEO & co-owner of Friotherm, believes that what the clients really estimate are products and services they can trust and rely on for years to come. Clearly, the focus of his position is on mutual success of client/user and supplier.

A worldwide service network that supports customers according to their needs supplements the Friotherm product range. Regularly trained specialists have knowledge and experience in every compressor and system application. They provide the necessary services, whether it is simple assistance, a consultation, analysis of an existing system, revision work or the fulfilment of a major service contract.

www.friotherm.com

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HELEN LTD.

“We strive to be the most customer-driven company and a forerunner in the energy business,” says Weckström.

“We’re not just serving customers with faster utilities but add-on services and new services, including eMobility services, solar power, dedicated wind power services, all kinds of cooling and heating storage, on top of the traditional services.”

“WE STRIVE TO BE THE MOST CUSTOMERDRIVEN COMPANY AND A FORERUNNER IN THE ENERGY BUSINESS. WE’RE NOT JUST SERVING CUSTOMERS WITH FASTER UTILITIES BUT ADD-ON SERVICES AND NEW SERVICES, INCLUDING EMOBILITY SERVICES, SOLAR POWER, DEDICATED WIND POWER SERVICES, ALL KINDS OF COOLING AND HEATING STORAGE, ON TOP OF THE TRADITIONAL SERVICES.” BUILT ON PARTNERSHIPS

The keystone of Helen Ltd.’s approach is that the company itself doesn’t function as an island but as part of an interconnected network of businesses and people working together. A prominent show of partnering is Helen Ventures, Helen’s Corporate Venture which will invest in the coming years 50 million euros in the most innovative and transformative European startups in the energy sector.

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HELEN LTD.

“Partnerships are obviously very important.

I would stress there are two kinds of partnership which are of importance,” Weckström says. “One is the power plant suppliers. We have trusted brands and good technology providers and businesses who can help us in making the carbon-neutral objective a reality.”

This means working with partners such as Sumitomo SHI FW, a provider of energy and environmental technologies and services focusing on high efficiency and flexible generation of energy, and Gradyent, a Dutch start-up and Helen Venture’s recent investment, that develops heat production with artificial intelligence.

“OFTEN CUSTOMERS DEMAND RENEWABLE ENERGY & CARBON NEUTRALITY. WE DELIVER. WE’RE NOT JUST BUILDING SERVICES AND PUSHING THEM TO MARKET. THERE IS A CUSTOMER PULL AND WE FULFIL THEIR NEEDS. SO BOTH SUPPLIERS AND CUSTOMERS ARE IMPORTANT.” 6 | BUSINESS FOCUS MAGAZINE

THE POWER OF SUSTAINABLE ENERGY SOLUTIONS

through decarbonization, decentralization and digitalization of the energy industry

We are the premier global supplier of innovative circulating fluidized bed (CFB) technologies and energy storage solutions, providing sustainable value to our customers through our relentless drive for environmentally sound and reliable energy solutions. ►

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Immense experience from supplying the world’s largest and longest running fluidized bed fleet

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PRODUCTS AND SERVICES CFB and BFB steam generators

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CRYOBattery ► CFB and BFB gasifiers ► CFB scrubbers ► Metallurgical waste heat boilers ► Full range of boiler and AQCS services ►

PROJECT DELIVERY ► D&S equipment supply ► Turn-key boiler and AQCS islands ► Long term service partnerships INDUSTRIES SERVED ► Power ► Industrial ► Combined heat and power ► Waste-to-energy

SUMITOMO SHI FW - MAKING A 100% RENEWABLE ENERGY FUTURE POSSIBLE TODAY SUMITOMO SHI FW (SFW) CFB BOILER TECHNOLOGY SHALL BE UTILIZED AT VUOSAARI BIOENERGY PLANT SFW will provide to HELEN Ltd a circulating fluidized-bed (CFB) boiler for the new Vuosaari bioenergy plant, located next to Helen’s existing power plant site in Vuosaari, Helsinki Finland. This new plant will assist Helen’s goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2035.

SFW will supply the CFB boiler island along with flue gas cleaning, auxiliary equipment and a boiler house. Heat production from the new plant will start during the heating season of 2022-2023. This bioenergy heating plant, with a fuel heat input of 220 MW, will use forest based biomass as the main fuel.

Tomas Harju-Jeanty, CEO, Sumitomo SHI FW said: “SFW is enthusiastically participating in development of a carbon free future together with Helen. We are proud to have our innovative CFB boiler technology selected as one of the steps in Helen’s goal to phase out the use of coal combustion.”

A GLOBAL COMPANY BASED IN FINLAND Since our beginning, our mission has always been to provide innovative and environmentally sound energy solutions to our customers. Our vision today is focused on solutions related to decarbonization, decentralization and digitalization to help transform the world’s global energy infrastructure toward a clean and sustainable energy delivery system.

Over our history, we have changed conventional markets by offering innovated solutions outside of the mainstream market. The prime example of this is our circulating fluidized bed (CFB) combustion boilers and gasifiers. While the mainstream market was building conventional pulverized coal and grate fired power plants, we were building power and industrial plants with clean-burning, fuel-flexible CFB combustion technology. History has shown that our CFB technology set new standards for clean combustion and gasification.

As the needs of our client’s change, we change too. A good example of this occurred in the late 2000s when climate change and CO2 emissions first became an important issue to Europe and the US. In response, we developed a carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology for our CFB boilers called “FlexiBurn”.

Today we are focusing our talent on solutions to help transition our energy infrastructure toward renewables. Our recent partnership with High View Power (HVP) is a good example of us transforming with the market and customer’s need with an innovative solution outside of the mainstream market. HVP’s liquid air energy storage technology, can store gigawatthours of electric energy with the flexibility to be built practically anywhere using processes and equipment well proven in the gas industries.

HELEN LTD.

These partnerships work up and down the supply chain, however, and the customer is at the centre of Helen’s vision.

“The other category is the customers,” Weckström says.

“Often customers demand renewable energy and carbon neutrality. We deliver. We’re not just building services and pushing them to market. There is a customer pull and we fulfil their needs. So both suppliers and customers are important.”

While all businesses feel pressure to become carbon neutral from government strategies and, of course, the very real global consequences of climate change, Helen has found inspiration in the passion its customers and suppliers have for building sustainable energy solutions.

FEEDING TIME AT THE ZOO

Among the customers who have driven Helen to innovate and create new clean energy solutions is the Korkeasaari Zoo. It was a job that brought some unique challenges with it, but as Weckström says, “Every customer is different!”

“We strive to be customerdriven and nowadays a lot of customers have very strict demands when it comes to carbon-neutral energy supply,” We c k s t r ö m explains.

We see a growing need for larger scale and longer duration electric energy storage driven by ever increasing levels of intermittent wind and solar energy onto electricity grids around the world. There are several energy storage technologies available today, from large scale pumped hydro to small scale Li-ion batteries, but none can practically provide large-scale energy storage with the flexibility to be located wherever the grid needs them.

Find out more and visit us at: www.shi-fw.com

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HELEN LTD.

“So a customer like the Korkeasaari Zoo wants to achieve their objectives in carbon neutrality and we’ve built a solution according to their wishes. It’s based on solar power and renewable district heating. Heating is really important obviously. In Finland, there is a bigger need for heat than in Central or Southern Europe and we have heating

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solutions based on renewables.”

This zoo is just one example of the kind of customer-driven project Helen excels at.

“We have many carbon-neutral energy production projects. We are building the largest heat pump in the world. We have seven heat pumps in the region producing clean energy. A new bioenergy heating plant and other renewable power sources

“WE HAVE MANY CARBON-NEUTRAL ENERGY PRODUCTION PROJECTS. WE ARE BUILDING THE LARGEST HEAT PUMP IN THE WORLD.”

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RADLY INCREASE YOUR WEB TRAFFIC BY UP TO 30% WITH RADLY BANNER AI Helen Ltd., one of the largest energy companies in Finland, significantly improved its digital marketing presence and customer pipeline with Banner AI, the leading tool for ad versioning and optimization.

RADLY’s Banner AI boosts dynamic display banner performance by automatically versioning and testing hundreds of banner designs.

“During the campaign, we saw a remarkable increase of 10% in ad clicks. At its peak, we even reached 30%,” notes Mikko Koski, RADLY’s COO. “Radly’s AI tool improved our workflow, decreased our workload, and we were happy with the results: it helped boost our digital marketing and bring in a great deal more customers.” tells Kirsi Suihkonen, Digital Sales Manager at Helen Ltd. RADLY is among the leading developers of marketing AI and automation solutions in the Nordic countries. A pioneer in digital transformation, RADLY helps companies develop their business with both ready-made and custom-tailored machine learning and automation solutions.

Learn more at www.radly.fi Interested in hearing more? Contact us: contact@radly.fi

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www.gradyent.ai Email: info@gradyent.ai

The new reference for digital insight and control of heating networks.

End-2-end optimization & Control

Secure cloud based SaaS

• Optimize whole network end-to-end: from source to customer

• Always up-to-date

• Built for optimization

Granular thermodynamic modelling • Dynamically forecast and optimize in realtime

Powered by AI

• Artificial Intelligence learns how to optimize your network

• Automatically adapt as your network expands over time

• No need to replace any systems • Securely access from anywhere you allow

Rapid setup and payback

• Rapid setup as AI learns from your historic network data • Flexible integration with existing solutions • Savings from day 1, payback in < 6 months

Intuitive dashboards

• Clear overviews of current network status • No ‘black box’: operator stays in control at all times

LOGSTOR repeats success

Now, almost 30 years later, Helen OY has once again chosen LOGSTOR to build a new 20 km pipeline in that same tunnel.

We are proud to be a part of the Helen project, which must be completed by September 2022.

In 1993, LOGSTOR Finland won one of the largest District Heating orders in history; a 30km DN1000/1200 pipeline to be built in one of the largest tunnels under the city of Helsinki.

LOGSTOR Danmarksvej 11, 9670 Løgstør, Denmark Tel: +45 9966 1000 Email: logstor@logstor.com

logstor.com

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HELEN LTD.

GRADYENT WE TRANSFORM DISTRICT HEATING NETWORKS WITH THE POWER OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE District heating is becoming increasingly important in the world’s quest for fossil-free energy supply. Many heating providers have the ambition to modernize their systems into 3rd and 4th generation networks, which increases complexity through combinations of sources, mixing stations and buffers with systems running at much lower temperatures.

However, to operate these systems, digital systems are needed, which so far fail to meet the requirements. First of all they require thousands of parameters to setup. Secondly, they operate in silos and fail to optimize the end-to-end system. Finally, they are unable to keep track of the frequent changes that district heating networks are going through.

The Gradyent technology solves this via unique “adaptive digital twin” technology. This system provides reliable information on network behaviour and gives a highly granular view of the heating demand, even beyond the location of the sensors. Not only in the present, but also in the past and – through our advanced forecasting module – also 24 hours ahead. demand. This info is critically important for any person or system making control or design decisions for a network, and wants to prevent undersupply in case of rapidly changing demand.

Depending on the system setup and bottlenecks, the Gradyent digital twin can be at the core of optimizations such as network temperature (>10 degrees Celsius), heating losses (10-15% reduction), peak load reductions and heatpump efficiency.

The system can be setup in around 6 weeks and provides highly intuitive maps interfaces that give insight to operators and asset managers, but is also able to directly send optimized system setpoints on a per-minute basis, including a 24h outlook to anticipate upcoming peak loads.

For inquiries please contact info@gradyent.ai

www.gradyent.ai

LOGSTOR ABOUT LOGSTOR More than 50 years of research, exploration and development in close dialogue with our customers have made LOGSTOR the leading manufacturer of pre-insulated pipe systems for any media - a second to none innovative leader, setting higher standards year after year.

We invented the pre-insulated pipe, the flexible pipe, unique joints and fittings, and we were the first company to introduce environmentally friendly products for the manufacturing of the best insulation material. We keep pushing boundaries, thus innovating for our customers, and for a better tomorrow.

WE FACE THE CHALLENGES OF THE WORLD We believe that we all play an important role in reducing relative energy consumption, and in developing an energy society that counterfights CO2 emission and has no negative impact on our environment.

Affordable, stable and sustainable energy will fuel a world of growth and at LOGSTOR, we take responsibility for a cleaner world…. !

In every society, pipe networks are vital parts of the infrastructure. Literally speaking, the pipe systems connect energy production, transmission, distribution and consumption - all the way.

LOGSTOR pipe solutions bring people together to create the most efficient energy solutions - ranging from politicians, utility owners, engineers, contractors, consumers and manufacturers. All in an orchestrated approach to fuel and shape the world and combat climate change.

Energy efficient pipe systems with the very best insulation properties will ensure that only a minimum of produced energy goes to waste when transported over long distances - no matter if the energy is hot water, cold water, oil, gas or other precious liquids.

For more information about the LOGSTOR solutions, please go to our website: www.logstor.com

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are replacing a major coal power plant in Helsinki.,” says Weckström. “And then we have cases like the Korkeasaari Zoo. We’ve also supplied multiple large solar power installations.

At the same time, Helen Ltd invests in clean running power plants that provide sustainable energy for all their customers.

“We have to take care of both: the production and the customer. Customer-centricity coupled with carbon-neutral production are the cornerstones of our strategy.,” Weckström explains.

WEATHERING THE PANDEMIC

Of course, next to climate change, the other global crisis affecting businesses around the world is the COVID-19 pandemic.

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HELEN LTD.

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HELEN LTD.

“The pandemic has, of course, affected our business, but not massively,” Weckström says.

“During the second quarter, electricity consumption in the Helsinki region went down by 10-15%. A lot of the businesses were temporarily closed down.

We can see that when services are closed for even a short time, consumption drops in serviceorientated cities like Helsinki.”

It’s clear, speaking with Weckström that he is proud of how Helen has performed during this crisis.

“A lot of people were working remotely and all our plants were operating without problems.

So operationally the first wave of the pandemic was handled extremely well in the company,” he says. “The engineering spirit and pride kept the company running.”

“I THINK THE KEY THING FOR THE PUBLIC IS THAT WE HAVE AMBITIOUS CARBON NEUTRAL TARGETS AND AIM TO BE FULLY CARBON NEUTRAL BY 2035. ALL OUR ACTIONS ARE GEARED TOWARDS THAT TARGET. CUSTOMERCENTRICITY AND DEMAND ARE CENTRAL.”

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HELEN LTD.

Whether it’s driven by the customers, or by Helen Ltd itself, the company’s direction remains the same.

“I think the key thing for the public is that we have ambitious carbon neutral targets and aim to be fully carbon neutral by 2035,” Weckström explains. “All our actions are geared towards that target. Customer-centricity and demand are central.”

“WE’RE THE MOST CUSTOMERDRIVEN COMPANY AND A FORERUNNER IN THE ENERGY BUSINESS.” 14 | BUSINESS FOCUS MAGAZINE

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HELEN LTD.

WWW.HELEN.FI