Referencing the Rubik’s cube, Edwin Diender, Chief Innovation Officer: Global Electric Power Digitalisation Business Unit, Huawei Technologies, Thailand, said each cube represents something or someone.

He was speaking on the second day of Enlit Africa 2023, focusing on the theme, Find the Right Technologies to Power the Global Energy Transition.

A cube that contains all the requisite components has the potential to link up the worldwide web of energy, he said. 

“It is energy powering the construction of intelligent cities.

“The digital journey is passing phases. It’s a journey that follows programmes and initiatives and brought together as pieces through universal infrastructure.”

Diender said the conversion of analogue to digital is the first step to digitisation. In the energy sector, for example, analogue meters are replaced by smart meters, an item that is digitised and may be “the first step on this journey.”

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The next step involves different building blocks that are brought together in a smart system that’s intelligent. This cube connects to many other cubes by a digital framework.

Diender said Huawei is looking at other forms of infrastructure, including electric power digitisation.

This would encompass finding the right technologies to help drive the digital journey for the energy industry.

Harnessing electricity transmission through digitisation

The company wants to “grab opportunities” like a software defined grid, intelligent power plant and green intelligent energy solutions. It wants to bridge industry requirements with digital technologies and finding the right technologies for industrial scenarios.

“The digital journey is a collaborative journey. We are working closely with customers worldwide in the electric power industry.”

He also cited technology solutions that can be used to protect power infrastructure – like an intelligent substation inspection system. Diender said the award-winning Yancheng Industrial Park was an example of Huawei looking at digital energy solutions.

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The Yancheng Park project was jointly developed by the company and the Yancheng Power Supply Company, a subsidiary of the State Grid Corporation of China. 

“The project uses the triple-dimensional model for energy transformation, decarbonisation, and digital transformation.

“By focusing on the three scenarios of smart energy management, carbon management, and campus management, this project delivers real-time monitoring of energy equipment, strong carbon emission management, intelligent and convenient access control management, and intelligent and coordinated micro-grid control. 

“The campus is powered by complementary energy sources and integrates its energy consumption system with on-campus terminals. 

“The project is a showcase of an intelligent and low-carbon campus that contributes to a green, low-carbon, safe, and efficient modern energy system.”

Published by Yunus Kemp on ESI Africa.

The earth is warming, and energy security and energy independence are more important than ever. The need for the power and energy utilities sector to accelerate the adoption of advanced technology to improve daily operations, plant performance, the transmission and distribution of power and enhanced customer usage and knowledge, needs to happen now.

The Indonesian government is acting as an enabler to create the framework necessary for the power and energy sector to pick up momentum and accelerate the energy transition. Frameworks and strategic direction are vital for greater electrification that is green and sustainable.

PLN manages Indonesia’s entire power industry chain from generation to consumption.

However, due to sluggish revenue growth and increasing O&M costs, PLN’s business pressure has become increasingly critical. Of the 75 million households, only 17% have broadband connections, and fibre connections only 10%.

According to Mr. Tedi Baharata, Deputy for Human Resources, Technology and Information at the Ministry of State-Owned-Enterprises (SOEs), despite the low connection rates, the purchasing power of Indonesians is increasing. The country needs reliable digital infrastructure and telecoms/connectivity infrastructures to support convenient access to goods and services for the people. As the sole provider of electricity in the country, PLN has to evolve from a traditional electricity company to a digital infrastructure company. “It’s a must for Indonesia, to grow to move forward.”

The start of a digital transformation journey

As a traditional electric power company, PLN lacks experience in operating new ICT services. In addition, the utility has needed to explore two revenue streams to rapidly increase its revenue: traditional electric power services, and power broadband. Because of the lack of experience in broadband network planning, construction, and operations, onboarding a knowledge partner, to support the strategy, network design, and implementation plan was critical. To support successful transformation, PLN also established a Transformation Office to plan and execute transformation breakthroughs.

Based on the wide coverage and high reusability of PLN’s existing infrastructure, leading global ICT infrastructure solutions provider, Huawei, was appointed to fulfil this role based on its experience in power broadband, helping PLN quickly launch services and complete the market plan of developing 20 million lines in four years, increasing revenues and improving the scalability of power services.

According to the President of Global Strategy & Marketing, Huawei Electric Power Digitalization Business Unit, Dr. Anthony Hu, from carbon neutrality vision to the energy security of supply and continuity issues, and the impact of energy prices on socio-economics, the utility needed to fully consider the game-theoretic relationship among green and low carbon, energy security and energy economy. It is destined to be a long-term, arduous, and complex systematic project.

“Currently our world is experiencing three major trends: energy transition, zero-carbon transformation, and digital transformation. With the rapid development of new energy such as wind, solar and distributed energy resources such as electric vehicles, digital and energy technologies are required to be deeply integrated to lay a digital path for future power systems,” Dr. Hu said.

In March 2022, Huawei established the Electric Power Digitalization Business unit, which combined Huawei’s strategy planning, R&D, product lines, marketing and sales resources and deeply collaborated with global partners to focus on the common requirements of security, efficiency and sustainability in smart power generation, smart grids, and comprehensive low-carbon energy services.

Dr. Hu added: “We are systematically building organisational capabilities and innovation systems for the electric power industry, from the strategic model, business scenarios, planning consultancy, and technical solutions based on the T3 ternary development system, and deeply integrated digital capabilities with challenges facing by the electric power industry, to create greater value for global electric power enterprises, such as PLN”.

Huawei is utilising advanced digital technologies to jointly innovate with partners in scenarios such as smart power plants, distributed photovoltaic control, transmission line inspection, digital substations, intelligent distribution, and net-zero carbon intelligent campus solution to achieve multiple targets of security and reliability, cost-saving, efficiency improvement, and sustainable development for the industry.

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Indonesia’s future power grid

According to Mr. Darmawan Prasodjo, Chief Executive Officer, of PT PLN: “We must be nimble; we must be quick. Innovation is becoming embedded in our new day. And that’s the only way to move forward.”

Just over two and a half years ago, during the National Electricity planning phase, PLN removed 10GW of coal from its baseload production, mitigating 1.8 billion metric tons of CO2 emissions in 25 years. However, Mr. Prasodjo stressed that this is not enough. To substitute this ‘loss’ the utility implemented the most aggressive, and greenest National Electricity planning in the history of PLN, and Indonesia, which brought online 51.6% additional generation capacity from renewable energy, tapping into hydro, geothermal, wind and solar.

The CEO notes that an estimated 280 million metric tons of greenhouse gases (GHG) globally is coming from the electricity sector and is only increasing as we move closer to 2060. Business as usual is going to increase this to 1 billion metric tons. Historically, GHG emissions have been attributed largely to the demand side; however, with the current energy transition needing a heavy injection of renewables, the fluctuations are now also on the supply side.

While in the short-term some countries must rely on coal-fired power plants, the medium-to-long-term is critical to include renewables to achieve energy independence, which they will need to do through innovation, the advancement of technology, and knowledge sharing with global communities.

Indonesia’s electrical network includes 2,300 High Voltage substations, each connected with fibre optics with the primary purpose to control the assets optimally and maintain reliability. For the past three years, the utility has been doing a lot of transformation, digitising the power plants, transmission, distribution, finance systems, customer service delivery, and procurement.

PLN brought together the two independently operated generation companies to become the largest generation company in Southeast Asia. The procurement of primary energy is consolidated into one, supporting the transaction of their primary energy which is estimated at a recurring $13 billion annually.

Additionally, assets that were once only used for electricity services, are now being used ‘beyond kilowatt hour’, including services for smart homes, the ecosystem for electric vehicles, to rooftop solar and battery storage.

Overcoming digital transformation hurdles

While momentum on the generation and transmission sides of the business is underway, the smart meter on the customer side is also being addressed. Mr. Prasodjo added: “We are modernising our grid to become a smart grid; we modernise our generation capacity, we modernise the dispatch centre because we have to transform to a system that is dynamic, progressive, and forward-looking.”

“With the available fibre optics in the substations, more than half a million distribution transformers scattered across the country, and neighbourhoods installed with fibre optics, we are transforming the utilisation of these assets, previously only used for the electricity service for the ‘beyond kilowatt hour’ is becoming a way to move forward, with Huawei’s Power Broadband Operations Solution.”

Cross-sector integration

President of Marketing & Solutions Sales, Huawei Electric Power Digitalization Business Unit, Mr. Jason Li, stresses that when two sectors need to come together, leveraging partnerships with industry experience and knowledge is critical to see the effective rollout of a strategy.

With a deep knowledge of the ICT/telecoms sector and an active drive to support the utility sector, Huawei needed an ambitious partner like PLN. Through this collaboration, Huawei was able to launch a pilot and trial digital solutions in different scenarios. “We work together with ecosystem partners and then go to market together,” he said.

He also introduced the Power Distribution IoT Solution, which was jointly built by Huawei and its partners, “reliable and efficient power distribution is critical to smart energy services, especially with the explosive growth of new energy and electric vehicles.” Adding that this soaring growth of distributed power sources, and the loads, leads to difficult measurement of power distribution. A key solution to this problem is IoT technology.

In addition, he added that the abandonment of wind and solar power is common when the energy cannot be managed well; while net zero translates to new energy, if it is not handled well, it will be a disaster. By using the Huawei distribution IoT solution to support data synergy, applications synergy, and operation and maintenance synergy, a utility can reduce development and deployment from months to days, with the realised default prediction in hours.  

This smart solution uses a data centre and communication network to provide remote intelligent operation and maintenance, increasing inspection frequency while shortening the fault detection time and recovering power supply within minutes. This edge-cloud synergy enables unified management, therefore, wavering manual site visits.

Collaboration is key

“This is an era of innovation; this is also the era of competition,” said Mr. Prasodjo. He added: “As a business, we are always exploring the best collaborations, and the most innovative partner is going to win. The most reliable partner is going to be the most potential partner that can provide the best solution and is going to be the simple foundation of collaborations. And so far, Huawei has been providing a unified solution.”

Through the support of governmental frameworks, coupled with the need and drive that PLN has shown to achieve a reliable, affordable, and green power system for its customers; Huawei is committed to supporting PLN to centralise its resources to expand its power broadband operation services, continuously increase the penetration of broadband Internet, and improve service quality, to provide the ultimate network experience for millions of households in Indonesia.

He concluded: “We cannot bear the burden alone. We need to move from being fragmented to unified. […] This is only the beginning. The beginning of a long and gruelling battle.”

This article is written with contributions from the abovementioned interviewees during an exclusive media round table with Smart Energy International, and a Summit session, hosted by Huawei at Mobile World Congress 2023, in Barcelona, Spain.

Gridspertise offers end-to-end cloud-edge platform solutions and services to accelerate the digital transformation of electricity distribution grids.

The Company’s portfolio is designed as an open ecosystem, easy to integrate with Distribution System Operators'(DSOs) legacy systems, combining intelligent grid devices with ready-to-use modular applications, running at the central level as well as on the edge.

Headquartered in Italy with offices in Spain, Brazil, India and the United States, Gridspertise works with more than 50 DSOs of different sizes and in different geographies.

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To discover more about Gridspertise’s journey, watch the video below.

This interview was filmed in November 2022 at Enlit Europe in Frankfurt, Germany

For more details visit the Gridspertise website at www.gridspertise.com

The accelerators, which were identified by the members of the digital trade association, are recommended to the European Commission and member states to focus on to drive forward the digital transformation of the energy ecosystem.

The four accelerators are:

1. Data cooperation to enhance access to and the use of sustainability data.

In particular an energy sharing data space should be developed taking account of privacy and other data sharing requirements, with the industry as a key stakeholder in its development.

2. Green network infrastructure to speed up connectivity.

The benefits that come from having access to troves of valuable data will fall short if it is not able to move quickly and efficiently or if it is not able to be processed. Thus high speed connectivity including 5G, WiFi and LTE is a prerequisite along with data centres as the ‘engine’ for big data processing.

3. Investment to boost R&D and innovation in green tech.

In many cases European governments have separate spending plans for digitalisation and decarbonisation but to drive forward the twin transition these should not be looked upon as separate investment areas.

4. Enabling regulation to create synergies between digital and green policies.

A strong regulatory framework is required that strengthens the link between digital and green policies and considers them in an integrated way, while organisations such as DG ENERGY and DG CONNECT need to be aligned on the common goal of telecommunications infrastructure in the energy space.

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Other accelerators which had been identified previously, and from which the four above were ranked, are setting KPIs to measure success in accelerating the twin transition, developing international standards for measuring digital’s enablement, launching a drive for green tech skills and creating action plans for the uptake of digital technologies across the most energy intensive sectors.

In addition to the accelerators, Digital Europe participants identified a small set of “winning and fast accelerating digital technologies” where Europe can lead.

These are cloud, AI, machine learning, IoT and edge control.

When combined, these technologies can be applied to deliver significant results in areas such as digital twins, enhancing flexibility and enabling end-user systems and platforms.

The study report also recommends the need for more use cases of digital technologies to demonstrate real added value and tangible impact for citizens, business and society as a whole.

In the foreword to Digital Europe’s report Cecilia Bonefeld-Dahl, director general, writes that the EU should use the current energy crisis as an opportunity to increase collaboration between the digital and energy sectors.

“We have the ‘what’ (a need to digitalise the energy ecosystem), the ‘why’ (to foster resilience and achieve our climate goals), and this report outlines the ‘how’ (investing in and using these accelerators and key winning technologies that will drive the transition forward).”

Given the global call for change sparked by pressing trends such as climate change, decarbonisation, and electrification, businesses within the energy and utilities industry are increasingly facing challenges as part of the ongoing transformation.

Future of cellular IoT

IoT, especially cellular, carries advantages for energy and utility enterprises on a digital transformation journey. Cellular is future-proof, which is key due to the long investment cycle within the industry, requiring extensive planning horizons.

Cellular IoT provides the benefit of addressing multiple use cases simultaneously while at the same time catering to future use cases via future-proofed technologies such as eSIM/eUICC. This provides a unique opportunity for enterprises within the energy and utilities sector to support asset lifecycle management without a need to change their connectivity hardware as new use cases emerge.

However, to unlock the potential of IoT, energy and utility companies still face several barriers that vendors need to address. At the top of the list is the ease of integration and usage, scalability, control, and security.

Partners are key in the transformation journey

To successfully continue to accelerate digitalization and adoption of IoT solutions within the energy & utilities industry, Ericsson and its partners can provide support and facilitate the transformation journey, enabling enterprises to easily deploy, manage and scale their global IoT business from a single IoT connectivity management platform.

Jess Thompson-Hughes, IoT Enterprise Sales Director and Energy & Utilities Segment Business Lead at Ericsson, unpacks how the company is playing an instrumental role within the energy and utilities sector.

Watch the full video interview below.

This interview was filmed in November 2022 at Enlit Europe in Frankfurt, Germany

For more information, you can visit the Ericsson website here – www.ericsson.com/en/industries/energy-utilities

Global IoT cases: https://www.ericsson.com/en/internet-of-things/cases

The 10-year development plan, which has been approved by the Public Service Regulatory Commission (PSRC), includes introducing digital solutions to prepare the transmission network for synchronisation with continental European networks.

In the coming years, AST plans to invest the funds to modernise various aspects of the grid, including commercial electricity, balance control systems, electric network model management systems, the dispatch control system and emergency automation.

These projects – which are hoped to ensure faster and better data exchange and system management – are planned to be implemented before the start of the synchronisation process.

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“In the next decade, we will continue our work on improving the reliability of network operation, systematically renovating the existing and creating new network infrastructure, modernising network management processes and introducing various digital solutions in order to be ready for synchronisation with European power grids in 2025,” said AST board member Arnis Daugulis.

Of the total investment, €210.5 million ($216.6 million) received 75% co-financing from European Union funds.

And until 2033, €21 million ($21.6 million) to €30 million ($30.9 million) is invested annually in the reconstruction of 330kV and 110kV substations, lines and distribution points, ensuring stable operation of the transmission system.

In each project, AST will evaluate infrastructure service life and wear and tear, making sure of the relevance of each project to prevent construction where load would not be ensured in the required volume. According to AST, this is due to their priority for high-quality and safe electricity transmission service at the lowest possible rates.

Additionally, financial investments will be planned to prevent the ageing of transmission equipment in the long term and ensure that no equipment exceeds its critical age.

By Emily Newton, editor-in-chief at Revolutionized

Use digital transformation to save money and boost efficiency

Many of today’s decision-makers are under increased pressure to keep costs down while ensuring their companies keep operating efficiently. A 2022 McKinsey report predicts an imminent transition to smart pumps. Those products encompass a broad category but generally feature internet connectivity and data-collection capabilities. McKinsey’s research confirmed how some companies have already introduced such products and gained competitive advantages.

However, it stressed that the most successful smart pump providers would focus on integrated systems rather than single components. Moreover, these companies must develop extensive sales and marketing strategies to target customers and their needs. Many current or existing clients who have not used smart pumps before may not immediately recognise how they could support and enhance their businesses.

The insights gained vary depending on what leaders choose to collect. However, they’ll almost certainly reveal how to cut costs and make the pumps operate more efficiently. The more knowledge a company representative has about what’s happening as the pumps run, the easier it’ll be for them to make confident decisions about improving operations.

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Make pumps and compressors more sustainable with digital technologies

People in today’s society increasingly look for feasible ways to live and work more sustainably. Improvements to pumps and compressors reflect that trend. Oil-free air compressors are great examples. These products improve air quality because they have no associated smoke or waste gases. There’s also no risk of oil contamination. When that issue occurs with traditional compressors, companies often experience significant downtime due to the need to service the machine and any connected production lines.

Experts are also investigating how to make electric motors on industrial pumps operate without consuming so many resources. Statistics suggest pumping comprises as much as 85% of the energy used during water-handling tasks. Thus, improving motor performance could result in major gains for industries worldwide that rely on these components.

In one real-life example, a Middle Eastern chemical producer got results with a target-based approach to sustainability optimisation. One goal was to improve a multilevel steam system that included air compressors. People at the company examined individual components to assess how enhancing those would help the system as a whole. 

Proceeding with a digital transformation can also support sustainability and reduce waste by improving leak detection. One outdated but still widely used method of finding leaks involves putting soapy water through the affected system and looking for bubbles. However, even leak-finding options are now digitised. Such technologies use advanced sensors and can scan an entire system to find problems. People can see the industrial setup on a screen, then make digital annotations to confirm the locations of issues.

These are just some of the many ways pumps and compressors can become more sustainable pieces of equipment with the help of digitalisation. It’s up to decision-makers to commit to proceeding with the necessary digital transformation. However, the results that occur after they do can be well worth the effort.

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Build digital twins of pumps and compressors and improve planning

People in numerous industries have achieved excellent outcomes by utilising digital twins. These virtual and highly accurate representations of physical objects can help people see the effects of making certain changes before making those adjustments in real life.

Some companies have also created digital twins of their networked compressors as part of a predictive maintenance strategy. For example, the digital twin could show ideal operating parameters. If an asset’s actual performance is too far outside of those, people might decide to schedule a service appointment sooner than originally anticipated.

Digital twins can also enhance labor force training methods by giving workers new ways to learn. People overseeing workforce training can combine digital twins with virtual reality (VR). Students can then access dynamic or static models of items like pumps and compressors that include rich details and supporting information.

Such digital training methods aren’t right for everyone. However, the increasing number of use cases makes them more accessible. The people planning workforce education can evaluate which instances might make digital twin-driven learning particularly appropriate. For example, might it allow employees to receive content without traveling to an in-person training facility? Could it be an effective way to bridge the gap between team members working for the same company on different continents?

It’s time to make a digital transformation

There’s no universally best way for professionals who work with pumps and compressors to move forward with a digital transformation. However, a good starting point is for decision-makers to pinpoint current areas of weakness. Those will often provide the largest payoffs when improvements occur.

Leaders also must determine their budgets. Some providers offer possibilities such as compressed air-as-a-service. These companies rely on digital technology to see how much customers use and ensure their equipment keeps working as expected. They may also give people access to digital dashboards so they can track how their usage changes over time. These options are often more affordable than others since customers typically only pay for the resources they use.

Finally, people must choose metrics to track throughout the digital transformation. Knowing which aspects to focus on makes it easier to determine what’s working and which strategies need further adjustment or development.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Emily Newton is the editor-in-chief of Revolutionized Magazine.

She enjoys writing articles about the energy industry as well as other industrial sectors.

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Utilities are deploying new innovations to systems and analytics to eliminate the rigid, hardware-bound silos and technical debt that have held digital transformation strategies hostage.

Greenbird Technologies CEO, Thorsten Heller, and partners discuss how composable systems & composable data are being utilised to address the demanding data requirements of evolving high-value applications in flexibility services, grid analytics, AI, ML, edge computing, and more.

Learn how Greenbird delivers enterprise integration and how ecosystem partners help accelerate innovation like digital twin and advanced analytics.

What you will learn about composable systems & composable data:

• What does it mean?
• Why do we need it?
• Why do we need it now?
• What are possible use cases or examples?
• How can we implement a “composable” architecture?
• What is the alternative?
• Is there an alternative?

Find out how composable data and analytics initiatives free up resources once limited by physical architectures and facilitate operational processes and customer experiences that address rapidly evolving market and regulatory requirements.

Moderator: Thorsten Heller, CEO and Co-Founder | Greenbird

Speakers:
Lasse Jamt, Vice President Renewables & Utilities | Kongsberg Digital

Bert Lutje Berenbroek, Founder & CEO | NET2GRID

Andrew Cook, Senior Product Line Manager | ITRON

Bianca van Effrink, VP International Business Development | Greenbird

We are living in a digital boom. The way goods and services are procured, delivered, and consumed is increasingly driven by information technology.

More work is done remotely. More interactions are digital. And more operations are automated.

Market demand has shifted more abruptly than ever before meaning companies have to respond faster and be more agile to all these changes.

At the same time, we’ve reached a tipping point for the sustainability of our planet. Today’s buyers demand eco-efficient brands, green products, responsibly sourced materials, and sustainability-focused solutions and services.

As a result, modern industrialists are pressured to maximise total shareholder return (TSR) while under intense scrutiny from governments, society, and investors to demonstrate sustainability practices and a positive total societal impact (TSI) score.

This dynamic environment is leaving some companies behind while others are capitalising on digitalisation to advance their operational models.

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Smart and digitally driven industrial enterprises are achieving dramatic gains in productivity, yield, efficiency, agility, return on capital, cost competitiveness, and sustainability.

Tailoring your digital thread

A key benefit of digitalisation is the ability to connect an organisation’s full value chain into a ‘digital thread’. This converged data and subsequent analytics support fast, precise decision-making for boosting operational efficiency and sustainability. 

One example is the integration and simultaneous optimisation of power (energy) and process (automation) systems. Traditionally, these operations were managed separately. Combining them generates a powerful multiplier effect for deeper analysis and collaboration across operations, commissioning, and maintenance.

The integration of power and process is a catalyst for operational resilience and improved sustainability across the lifecycle of the plant.

This integrated, digitalised approach drives Electrical, Instrumentation and Control (EI&C) CAPEX reductions up to 20% and OPEX efficiencies, including decreased unplanned downtime up to 15%, in addition to improving bottom line profitability by three points. 

End users see energy procurement cost reductions of 2-5% and carbon footprint reductions of 7 – 12% when implementing these strategies.

It offers a comprehensive view of asset performance management, energy management, and the value chain from design through construction, commissioning, operations, and maintenance. 

When undergoing such an integration effort, implementing the right strategies can improve operational resilience for better anticipation, prevention, recovery from, and adaptability to market dynamics and events.

This plant-wide data collection, reliable control and command exchange between systems, operators and control room will empower the workforce with clear and verified decision-making.

This digital transformation and the introduction of new technology help in developing human capital and enforce a rapid workforce transition, that has completely upended both the need for training and the way to deliver it (e.g., simulation-based learning to provide situational awareness).

Several tools available today aid in developing human capital. From training to engineering, operations and maintenance, technology in every potential aspect where human intervention is involved, can be used to enhance human engagement which improves performance, safety, and profitability.

Webcast 31 Aug | Green is the new black: Reskilling the workforce for the energy transition

Integrating power and process on a single platform unifies all the aspects of engineering, operations, and maintenance, and helps companies to achieve optimisation across all the stages of the plant lifecycle.

Training systems

Training tools have increasingly become sophisticated in recent years. Training based on an actual site with all the physical equipment is recreated using a 3D virtual reality digital twin.

In the 3D virtual reality trainer, the trainee ‘sees’ the process equipment as he will see at site and operates the equipment as is expected from standard operating procedure, and the equipment reacts in the same way as it would in real life.

The advantage with such training is that even if the trainee makes a mistake while operating certain equipment, the resulting failure is virtual, saving thousands of dollars that otherwise could have been lost because of such a mistake.

Such training makes trainees more aware of potential impact of their actions and allows companies to evaluate the readiness/performance of an employee before they are sent out to site.

Digital twins can be created at the conceptual stage of any project. This digital twin can be used to engineer the whole plant, or a new unit being added to the existing plant for de-bottlenecking the existing plant.

The training technology also includes AR/VR immersive simulators to connect control room operators, maintenance, and field personnel in a single realistic learning environment used for site familiarisation, work policies, field operations training, and maintenance procedures.

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Indeed, advanced analytics, predictive and prescriptive maintenance are gaining increasingly higher acceptance among oil and gas companies.

Some solutions incorporate predictive analytics to help end users achieve the highest possible return on critical assets, based on predictive maintenance programmes which help reduce unscheduled downtimes.

Those analytics can also be hosted in the cloud by adding technologies designed to be set up, managed, and used without additional IT infrastructure or staffing.

Data can be consolidated in comprehensive and useful dashboards, accessible on mobile devices for process and asset-centric visualisation and alerting.

Analytics can be automated and contain condition-based rules or additional capabilities, such as guided or advanced analytics, and are designed to not require complex algorithms to be written so it can be used by non-data scientists.

The confluence of digital transformation and the constant pressure to improve sustainability, and reduce CAPEX and OPEX, are driving an initiative to rethink the separation between process automation and power management.

The process of electrification is forecasted to increase two-fold in 2050 as more companies intensify their decarbonisation efforts.

This increased electrical and power asset data should be integrated with process data to improve operational and maintenance performance – IIOT, big data analytics, digital twin and process automation, are key technology enablers for the acceleration of this integration.

Lucas Pellegrin is EcoStruxure power & process execution vice president at Schneider Electric.

Innovation is crucial if commercial organisations are going to disrupt existing markets and create new growth opportunities. In this respect, the energy industry is no different.

The adoption of new edge computing solutions is about to create this disruption. This latest generation of solutions is software-defined, capable of multi-mode operation and is OT-protocol agnostic.

These solutions are replacing traditional control and monitoring systems which are often hardware-centric and siloed. Instead, flexible edge systems running on commodity hardware are now being deployed across power industry use cases. They include renewable energy generation, battery energy storage systems and distributed smart grid control.

The digital grid of the future

The electricity grid is already undergoing a process of change, driven by the need for digitisation to support much greater efficiency and responsiveness. This is required due to the increasing grid complexity operators must deal with. It flows from the need to integrate new energy sources and to generate and store energy in a distributed manner.

Other factors driving this change include the need for generators, distributors and energy technology companies to offer new products and services in an increasingly competitive market. It is also important that both regulators and consumers have improved access to the very latest operational and commercial information.

When combined with much greater intelligence across subsystems, digitising the grid assets across operations is vital to help manage this complexity.

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The need for edge computing

Edge computing solutions that can support open, configurable and manageable software architectures are already starting to replace legacy control and monitoring systems.

Edge computing introduces local computing resources at the substation and field asset level in an electrical grid. It brings processing capabilities and storage closer to where it is needed. It also helps improve scalability, response times and operational costs by enabling systems that are easier to maintain and update.

By processing much of the data generated from the connected grid assets locally, users will see a significant reduction in network bandwidth costs associated with shipping the ever-increasing amounts of OT data to a data centre in the cloud. Fault resiliency of the grid is improved by enabling decentralised autonomous operations.

Edge computing is enabling a new generation of smart applications that can leverage the latest advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). It brings many of the benefits of cloud computing such as containerisation, virtualisation and modern approaches to application orchestration and updating to the OT world.

This makes it much easier to update existing systems or deploy new applications by leveraging commodity edge hardware – certainly when compared to traditional approaches based on dedicated hardware (e.g., PLCs and PACs). Importantly, there is less need to completely replace parts of a system during an upgrade, which is costly and time consuming.

Edge computing vs. cloud computing

For a number of years, the energy sector has invested significantly in cloud infrastructure as a key component of its ongoing digital transformation. Driven by the Internet of Things (IoT), the growth in the number of internet-connected devices and sensors has exploded. Across industries, this growth is helping to enable digital transformation.

The same trends are being seen in the energy sector. However, with this exponential increase in the amount of OT data, it is becoming unfeasible to continually ship this huge volume of data to the cloud for analysis and processing. It is too expensive and introduces latency into a system. The electric grid of the future must be much more reactive to real-time changes in energy generation and demand. A cloud-centric approach can inhibit this.

This is where edge computing plays a major role in connecting the assets, then acquiring and processing the data locally in real-time. Local data storage can be provided when necessary to support periods of intermittent connectivity. An edge solution can also provide the integration point with the backend cloud systems providing the overall grid management. In this case, only a subset of the OT data collected needs to be forwarded to the cloud for further analysis, where response times are not so demanding.

This means it is a false choice between an exclusively cloud or edge-based architecture. The future electric grid needs both, although more OT applications will reside at the edge, with their deployment and updates managed centrally from the cloud. In this case, a hybrid edge-cloud model will become the norm.

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Challenges

Edge computing will become a key disruptor in the energy sector and can provide many benefits as already outlined, although significant challenges remain. For a fully interoperable and decentralised electric grid, the edge layer will become the integration point for both legacy and new assets at the substation level and across distributed energy resources (DERs). This requires the edge systems to communicate with many different types of equipment using a plethora of communication protocols, and to acquire and normalise the data from a disparate set of endpoints.

The “fusion” of data from multiple sources is critical to the creation of a common representation of the data that can support the edge applications (e.g., control, monitoring and analytics) in a consistent and interoperable manner. This is a significant challenge when you consider the wide range of communication and data mapping standards used in the energy sector such as Modbus, IEC-61850, IEC-60870, DNP3, OPC UA, EtherNet/IP, MQTT, Sparkplug and SunSpec. Individual grid assets may use their own proprietary or specialised communication protocols, which also need to be integrated into the edge system.

Edge Computing also introduces a new layer of computing resources to support local processing. Despite being based on commodity hardware and using commercial operating systems (typically Linux-based), these devices can come in a range of different form factors (e.g., MCU, IPC, Server).

At the substation and across the grid, there may be many of these edge devices that need to be managed. It is crucial that users be able to manage these devices and their application workloads centrally, normally from the cloud, but also potentially on-premise when required. The latest generation of edge applications typically supports containerization (e.g., Docker) which provides a range of benefits such as application portability. However, a management system must also be able to deploy and manage other workloads, such as conventional executables.

Edge platforms

To meet these challenges and deliver on the benefits that edge computing will bring to the future electric grid, a new generation of power industry-specific edge solutions will be necessary. The key ingredient of these new products is the edge software platform, which is the underlying software framework on which the applications will be deployed.

To enable the distributed grid of the future an edge software platform provides a range of services and an interoperability foundation on which to build the edge applications. Key platform services include configurable, no-code multi-protocol OT integration, data normalisation, transformation and filtering, local rules and analytics support, data storage/store and forward, security services (including client authentication, access control and data encryption), alarm handling and cloud connectivity.

Openness is the key characteristic of these edge software platforms. This means providing an application deployment environment that the energy technology providers can use for easy creation of their own value-add applications. The platform must be OT protocol- and cloud-agnostic, hardware- and operating-independent, component- or microservices-based to support application composition and distribution. Critically important, it must provide a standard set of APIs to support the integration of the edge applications that are consuming and processing the OT data.

Both commercial and open-source edge software platform implementations have emerged over the last few years. These have reached a level of maturity that now offers the energy solution providers a range of viable options.

A key open-source initiative with broad cross-industry support is the Linux Foundation’s LF Edge. The objective of LF Edge is to establish an open, interoperable framework for edge computing. EdgeX Foundry is one of the largest projects under the LF Edge umbrella. It provides a flexible and scalable open software platform that facilitates interoperability between OT devices and applications at the edge. EdgeX Foundry and its commercial derivates, such as IOTech’s Edge Xpert, are seeing increasing adoption within the power industry.

The future power of edge computing

A new generation of edge solutions is set to revolutionize the power industry. These solutions are already helping accelerate digital transformation and support new use cases and services. Edge computing will enable a more intelligent, agile, efficient and distributed electricity grid. It is crucial to the integration of assets at the substation level and between DERs, and will support applications that are much easier to deploy and maintain as the grid evolves.

The electricity grid of the future will be based on a hybrid model that leverages the advantages of both cloud and edge computing.

Finally, open edge platform software that provides a range of configurable microservices will be the key enabler for a new generation of energy-specific solutions.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Andrew Foster is the product director and co-founder of IOTech.

NET2GRID offers artificial intelligence and machine-learning services in energy insights based on disaggregation of energy consumption from smart meter data. NET2GRID claims its app enables customers to understand where their energy is being consumed and provides utilities greater insights into individual appliances and EV charging energy consumption.  

The installation of the company’s customer engagement and customer intelligence application in Itron’s distributed intelligence ecosystem is the first step in NET2GRID’s growth plan, according to the company.

In Itron’s ecosystem, the app will be used to analyse smart meter data in near real-time to provide accurate residential load disaggregation and demand predictions.

This will enable consumers to be provided with recommendations on how best to optimise their energy usage at the appliance level.

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Through the distributed intelligence platform, Itron collaborates with innovators to build open, interoperable, value-driven applications to help utilities meet rapidly changing consumer demands and align operations with changing business models that are being shaped by the transition to renewables and the digital trasnformation.   

Don Reeves, senior vice president, Outcomes at Itron said: “Living in a fast-paced technology advanced world, utilities must transform quickly to meet the needs of customers.

“Working together with NET2GRID to bring DI applications such as consumer load disaggregation into Itron’s expanding ecosystem allows customers to take their energy consumption management into their own hands. In addition, utilities can engage with their customers regarding their carbon footprint and energy usage. We are excited to collaborate with NET2GRID as we both envision a more sustainable future with EV integration and grid modernization in mind.” 

Bert Lutje Berenbroek, CEO of NET2GRID added that joining Itron’s ecosystem will enable his firm to “bring on additional applications in the future.”

Berenbroek added: “Once available, the real-time load disaggregation app can deliver billions of predictions every day and provide behind-the-meter insights on charging EV using solar PV production. Through Itron’s third-party ecosystem and our application development partners, we are accelerating how consumers and utilities can benefit from DI applications and taking advantage of energy insights to optimise grid operations. We’ll be able to offer this capability to utilities and customers at a lower cost and develop applications more rapidly than previously possible.” 

The pilot included the use of mTHM to monitor the health status of 112 transmission and distribution transformers.

The utility is now expanding the use of the technology across an additional 88 transformers.

The project enables Energisa Group to analyse the risk of failure and identify areas of degradation where maintenance or repair can be applied to avoid service disruption or asset failure.

Monitoring the transformers and other grid assets in real-time will enable Energisa Group to optimise the performance of its assets and grid for improved efficiency, reliability and customer services to 8 million consumers that are served through the group’s nine distribution system operators.

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The project is expected to help reduce operational costs and enable the utility to achieve time savings.

The contract is part of the utility’s digital transformation journey which includes the deployment of advanced solutions that can help amplify the transition to renewables and enable Energisa to offer new, innovative and digital services, in addition to aligning operations with changing regulation and consumer demands for smart services.

Energisa Group says it will be investing $7.5 billion in grid modernisation across Brazil through 2024 in a bid to upgrade its infrastructure and improve access to affordable and reliable electricity to consumers living in energy poverty.

According to research firm Frost & Sullivan, global utilities will spend $33.42 billion by 2030 to digitise energy distribution and retail segments, spending that will see the deployment of advanced solutions in areas including customer services, optimal grid operations and connected and integrated businesses.

A 15-year deal signed through the utility’s subsidiary SESCO includes the supply and installation of some 180,000 advanced metering units and an IoT communications network to provide connectivity for the smart meters and other intelligent grid devices.

Itron will also provide Sarawak Energy with its Operations Optimiser, UtilityIQ software-as-a-service, and network-as-a-service for optimal grid management, monitoring and maintenance of the smart meters and communications network.

Optimiser will enable Sarawak Energy to develop new business processes and workflows leveraging data and insights generated from internal and external sources to improve operational efficiency.

Itron will also be responsible for smart meter and grid devices’ data collection and management.

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The deal is expected to help the utility to improve energy efficiency, customer engagement, grid reliability, consumer billing and services to its 3 million customers.

The signing of the deal follows a successful pilot conducted in 2018 in which the utility deployed 6,000 advanced metering units.

The deal is part of efforts by Sarawak Energy to become a digital utility by 2025, to provide its consumers with innovative and next-generation tools and services.

Don Reeves, senior vice president of Outcomes at Itron, said: “With our open, standards-based network, Sarawak Energy will be able to easily and efficiently improve customer service, safety and operational efficiency.

“With such a high success rate from our pilot deployment in 2018, we are thrilled to continue the expansion of this project with our long-term customer, Sarawak Energy.”

However, a lot of developments have been achieved despite the negative restraints. We look at the top five achievements realised in 2021.

Europe’s smart meter installation milestone

In 2021, the penetration of smart electricity meters in Europe passed the 50% mark with more than 150 million units installed in consumer households and premises, according to a study released by Berg Insight.

The milestone is owing to increased digitalisation and modernisation of the grid and the enactment of supporting policies as the bloc eyes to achieve energy sustainability goals set under the Fit for 55 and Green Deal packages.

The UK under its effort to install 50 million smart meters, connected 16.6 million units on the Data Communications Company (DCC)’s network as of 11 December 2021. In late November, the DCC had announced that 10 million households have been connected to its network.

By 2026, the number of smart meters installed in Europe is expected to reach 227 million units with the central, eastern and southern Europe regions, which have been slow in deploying over the past years, expected to have the ten fastest-growing markets in terms of first-generation deployments.

The proximity of central and eastern Europe to advanced utility firms including EDF and E.ON and to vendors including Landis+Gyr, Kamstrup and Sagemcom will increase penetration throughout the decade, according to Guidehouse Insights.

India announces smart meter rollout timeline

Consumer acceptance and a lack of funding delayed smart meter penetration in India over the past years, according to Anil Rawal, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of IntelliSmart Infrastructure. Efforts by EESL and utilities have to date resulted in just over 2 million units being deployed across India.

However, the pledge made by the Indian government in 2021 to install advanced units for all residential customers by 2025 is expected to be a game-changer. It will see more than 250 million smart meters installed through 2025 and more funding mechanisms introduced to support deployment.

Guidehouse Insights predicts the installation of smart meters in India to exceed 5 million meters annually post COVID-19, as utilities invest more in digital tools to address non-revenue electricity.

Hydrogen meter

With the global economy striving to expand the hydrogen market to speed up the decarbonisation of industry, energy generation, transportation and building heating and cooling systems, various efforts are underway to come up with 100% hydrogen meters.

The UK government, under the Hy4Heat project, has partnered with various smart meter manufacturers to develop 100% hydrogen meters.

As part of the initiative, SIT and its subsidiary MeterSit, have managed to develop a 100% smart hydrogen meter that has received certification from the Netherlands Measurement Institute.

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Federico de’ Stefani, Chairman and CEO of SIT group, said: “After the satisfaction of seeing our products installed in the hydrogen houses in the UK and exhibited at COP26, we are proud to obtain this certification for our 100% hydrogen meter which allows us to move from a test phase to a production phase.

In early December, Sensirion also launched its pure hydrogen, hydrogen blends and natural gas smart meter. The company claims its module is the world’s first module that measures any gas mixtures.

New smart meter use cases

Smart meters have traditionally been used to ensure accurate billing but digital transformation trends within the utility sector in 2021 have resulted in the introduction and piloting of new use cases.

A report released by 2020health and commissioned by Smart Energy GB highlights the application of smart meters for health and care monitoring systems.

The report explores the benefits of using smart meters for home monitoring for vulnerable individuals and as part of post-operative or restorative care, for population-level screening and monitoring, and for self-monitoring for well-being and safety.

The new use cases are being piloted in the UK and in Japan. However, factors including a lack of proposition and collaboration, technological and connectivity limitations, and supporting policy and regulations will need to be addressed for them to become mainstream, according to the study.

Apart from using advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) to enhance billing, US utility Con Edison announced some new use cases including using smart gas detectors for outside monitoring of natural gas leakages.

AMI valve box intrusion detection devices are helping Con Edison to protect its distribution network and valves from intrusion and tampering in dense areas.

The utility will also be installing cathodic protection test stations for remote monitoring of gas distribution pipes and evaluation of the impact on the grid or leaks on the soil.

New smart meters, interoperability and communication standards

Interoperability of smart meters and grid devices and resilient connectivity are areas the industry continues to address to enhance the operations and efficiency of smart grid environments.

In 2020, Kamstrup unveiled a new smart electricity meter, OMNIA, which the firm claims enables utilities to leverage both RF mesh and IoT cellular communications specifications and technologies for connectivity.

Mikkel Winther Johansen, Product Manager, said: “It’s important to us to be able to cater to different needs, and with the new addition to our meter portfolio, it’s up to our customers to decide whether they want to jump the IoT train straight away or stick to the tried-and-tested RF solution, only gradually making the transition. Both have their benefits, so it’s really a matter of what suits the utilities’ individual needs.”

Itron launched a new electricity meter for the German market, with enhanced operations and interoperability with multi-vendor environments. The new capability is vital for utilities with energy companies partnering with various technology providers in smart grid and energy modernisation programmes.

The report states that spending on digital tools within the energy distribution and retail industries will increase by 10.5% from $12.33 billion in 2020 to $33.42 billion by 2030.

Frost & Sullivan states that utility investments in software, analytics and information technology services and solutions including cloud computing, big data and IoT will enable them to transform business beyond commodity selling and open new revenue streams.

The three main areas utilities are targeting to enhance processes by deploying advanced solutions include customer services, optimal grid operations and connected and integrated businesses.

North America, Europe and Latin America are expected to dominate the market.

Maria Benintende, Industry Principal, Energy & Environment at Frost & Sullivan, said: “Power grids are the backbone of the energy transition because they are a fundamental enabler of demand electrification and decentralised renewable energy (RE) integration. Hence, the digital transformation of power distribution companies and energy suppliers is a major trend that represents a considerable business opportunity.

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“While digital investment has been traditionally aimed at the digitisation of internal processes to reduce workloads and save costs, it is now increasingly being aimed at reinventing business models and creating new streams of income through connected businesses.”

The study states that cloud computing is increasingly becoming the foundation for utilities’ digital transformation owing to its ability to make “automation and integration between various services simpler, scalable, and less expensive.”

The study also highlights that digitalisation is enabling energy firms to address the challenges and reap benefits associated with the proliferation of smart technologies including smart appliances, electric mobility, and distributed solar and storage.

As a result, new business models are becoming available and shaping the energy transition.

Markets trends providing players with opportunities include:

• Educating utilities on the benefits of metering data: Vendors should develop smart mobile device management (MDM) platforms that are easier to deploy, scale and maintain to enable utilities to fully leverage the benefits of AMI.
• Expand software as a service (SaaS) offerings to everything as a service (XaaS) value propositions.
• Strengthen cloud computing capabilities to streamline digital transformation.
• Opting for microservices architectures.

Find out more about the report.

Having some of the largest distribution system operators in the world partnering with technology providers to co-develop an entirely new solution is intended to revolutionise the energy transition and help achieve a climate-neutral economy.

The E4S Alliance is helping digitalise the grid and make it data-driven in order to meet carbon neutrality.

Utility companies will benefit from an open standard-based secure and highly scalable platform to monitor and control the electrical grid, especially in low voltage.

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Virtualisation of applications, in combination with edge computing, leads to lower total cost of ownership, faster time to market for new applications, and more efficient management and delivery of electricity.

About Enedis

As a public service provider, Enedis manages the French electricity distribution network. The company’s 38,000 employees serve 37 million customers, developing, operating and upgrading 1.4 million kilometers of low- and medium-voltage (230 and 20,000 volts) electricity networks while managing associated data. Enedis carries out customer connections, 24/7 troubleshooting, meter reading and all technical interventions. It is independent of the energy suppliers responsible for marketing and managing electricity supply contracts.

About Capgemini

Capgemini is a global leader in partnering with companies to transform and manage their business by harnessing the power of technology. The Group is guided everyday by its purpose of unleashing human energy through technology for an inclusive and sustainable future. It is a responsible and diverse organization of over 300,000 team members in nearly 50 countries. With its strong 50-year heritage and deep industry expertise, Capgemini is trusted by its clients to address the entire breadth of their business needs, from strategy and design to operations, fueled by the fast evolving and innovative world of cloud, data, AI, connectivity, software, digital engineering and platforms. The Group reported in 2020 global revenues of €16 billion.

Get The Future You Want | www.capgemini.com

About Minsait

Minsait (www.minsait.com) is Indra’s leading company in digital transformation and Information Technologies. Minsait possesses a high degree of specialization and knowledge of the sector, which it backs up with its high capability to integrate the core world with the digital world, its leadership in innovation and digital transformation, and its flexibility. Thus, it focuses its offering on high-impact value propositions, based on end-to-end solutions, with a remarkable degree of segmentation, which enables it to achieve tangible impacts for its customers in each industry with a transformational focus. Its capabilities and leadership are demonstrated in its product range, under the brand Onesait, and its across-the-board range of services.

About E4S

The Edge for Smart Secondary Substations (E4S) Alliance is a technical working group formed by Ariadna Grid, Capgemini, Circutor, Enedis, Iberdrola, Intel, Landis+Gyr, Merytronic, Minsait, TTTech Industrial and ZIV Automation. E4S is working to accelerate the creation of a standards-based, open, interoperable, and secure architecture that addresses both the technical and business challenges faced by utilities around the globe.

DTEK Kyiv will deploy GE Digital’s advanced distribution management system to centralise dispatching centers and to develop a unified grid management system.

The technology will help reduce the power interruption time for customers, facilitate the development of new services, accelerate the digital transformation and improve services to 5.4 million households and 150,000 enterprises.

Amongst the five service territories that DTEK Grids operates in, namely; Kyiv, Dnipro, Donetsk and Odesa regions, and the city of Kyiv, Kyiv will be the first to deploy the platform over the next two years, according to the statement.

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The platform will provide the DSO with predictive maintenance and autonomous grid capabilities for reliability and efficiency.

The DSO seeks to leverage digital tools to achieve its 2040 carbon neutrality target.

Geliukh Ivan, board member at DTEK Grids, said the utility is implementing new technologies “in creating an innovative ecosystem in DSOs” to ensure “the reliability, flexibility, and efficiency of the grids. At the same time, we are changing approaches to network management to ensure that each of our customers has a reliable power supply.”

Jim Walsh, general manager at GE Digital Grid Software business, added: “Every day, management of the electric grid is becoming more complex with increasing amounts of distributed generation and distributed energy resources at all voltage levels. However, the need to manage the safety, reliability, and security of supply across the distribution grid remains a priority.”

E-Redes and Arkossa Smart Solutions will be deploying 1,000 transformation centers to complete the utility’s rollout of smart meters and digital services.

In the first phase, 150 transformation centers were deployed and used to optimize some 25,000 smart meters and data from smart devices to improve the management of the grid and to enhance customer services.

Through its PLEXUS service and transformation centers, Arkossa trained E-Redes’ staff, analysed, optimized and generated work orders to help better the operation and maintenance of the low voltage network.

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Increasing the number of the centers will enable E-Redes to improve the cybersecurity of its grid infrastructure, efficiency, reliability and lifespan.

The project is a grid modernization mechanism of E-Redes which is designed to accelerate the energy transition and retirement of fossil resources for energy sustainability and affordability, according to the statement.

Víctor Domínguez, CEO of Arkossa, said: “The strong transformation that the electricity distribution sector is experiencing with the arrival of smart meter networks requires the transformation of how the operation and maintenance of these are carried out and, this is a good example of this. With the PLEXUS service, E-Redes achieves a sharp reduction in operating costs.” 

Rafael Ángel Bago, Commercial Director of Arkossa, commented that “the development of new work models and new business ecosystems is necessary for the effective and efficient operation and maintenance of the new networks of remote management meters. The collaboration between our companies is a good example of these innovative models.”

The two companies will use digital tools and sustainable energy resources and practices to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and meet their sustainability goals.

Over a three-year period, Enel and INWIT will leverage renewable energy, digitalisation and electrification to accelerate the energy transition in Italy whilst ensuring social, cultural and economic inclusiveness.

Enel will install solar PVs, energy storage and implement energy efficiency measures at INWIT’s sites. The utility will also help the telco to adopt smart mobility and circular economy approaches to reduce its carbon footprint.

The projects will enable INWIT to reduce its energy costs as well as modernise its infrastructure in line with sustainability regulations.

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INWIT and Enel will jointly develop IoT services for the telco and utility industries.

INWIT says the partnership with Enel will enable the firm to achieve its goal of being an enabler of digital development within the communications industry by laying the foundations for the rollout of reliable and resilient infrastructure.

Enel says it will use the partnership to achieve its 2021 – 2023 Sustainability Plan.

Carlo Tamburi, Director of Enel Italia, said: “We are further strengthening our commitment to the energy transition. Collaboration with an infrastructure operator like INWIT is particularly strategic for promoting and disseminating circular solutions and fostering the digitaliSation process, which is one of the fundamental levers for transitioning to a more sustainable model”.

Giovanni Ferigo, the CEO of INWIT, added: “The collaboration with Enel allows us to give a new boost and speed up on the ecological transformation of our country.

 “We are aware of the strategic role played by our business and believe that these agreements, through the sharing of reciprocal competences, are an essential tool in successfully identifying innovative solutions with positive impacts on the general public”.

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Counties Energy will deploy an advanced distribution management system from GE Digital and combine it with the company’s existing geographic information system (GIS) for network reliability, efficiency and flexibility.

The project will enable the utility to leverage grid and consumer data to enhance the resiliency of the energy network.

The combination of the two platforms will enable smarter, sustainable, and innovative energy services and solutions that deliver better customer experiences, operational efficiencies, and the ability to manage growth intelligently, ultimately shaping a future-proofed energy platform, according to a statement.

The solution integrates SCADA with distribution and outage management systems to come up with a single platform for grid control and information sharing. The project will enable Counties Energy to provide operators with an accurate connected single view of the end-to-end network of assets with a fully digital as-built process flowing from the field to the GIS system and on to the ADMS.

Data from smart meters will be used to provide a clear image of the grid and to increase the accuracy of the traditional SCADA high and medium voltage view.

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The solution will enable the use of analytics to have a clear view of the impact of weather on the grid as well as to prepare for harsh weather events before they occur.

Moonis Vegdani, Counties Energy’s group general manager of technology and digital said with his firm serving one of the fastest-growing areas in New Zealand, adopting digital technologies will enable the creation of “intergenerational value for our customers by enabling a reliable electricity network and diverse energy choices and offerings.”

Vegdani, added that digital technologies will enable the utility to meet changing consumer demands, modernise infrastructure and services, remain relevant in the future and align services with the rapid emergence of new solutions.

He said: “Counties Energy is well underway on this important journey with its extensive low voltage visibility through the smart meter network. This ADMS transformation programme, with GE Digital as a partner, is a key foundational step towards the next phase of our journey.”

Jim Walsh, General Manager for GE Digital’s Grid Software business, reiterated: “With these new capabilities, they will enable greater visibility across the network and manage the growth of distributed energy resources so they can lower the carbon footprint needed for energy distribution.”

The report, Navigating the Energy Transition Consumer, which is based on a survey of 34,000 consumers in 17 countries, states that increased focus on customer experience and the use of digital tools and consumer insights will enable utilities to remain competitive in a rapidly changing and competitive environment.

The report states that a customer-driven energy transition and digital transformation will pave the way for utilities to innovate their services and in the process will meet current and next-generation consumer demands.

The study identified the emergence of a new type of consumer – omnisumer – a person or business entity who participates in a dynamic energy ecosystem across a multitude of places, solutions and providers.

92% of the surveyed consumers have at least one new energy-related product or service in their home, 86% are interested in self-generation, 25% are considering an EV, and 13% are thinking about installing battery storage in the next three years.

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Such consumers present both a challenge and opportunity for utilities to modernise their services and in the process speed up the decarbonisation of networks and digitalisation, according to the study.

Greg Guthridge, EY Global Power & Utilities Customer Experience Transformation Leader, said with omnisumers, the “demand for simple, but sophisticated, end-to-end solutions and integrated experiences will become the new basis for effortless engagement.

“Those energy providers that rapidly develop a mature, yet simplified ecosystem, in which “omnisumers” can exchange value, will win in the market.”

The survey also revealed that consumers are mainly focused on three key areas including saving money, saving time and saving the planet. As such, the demands are pushing utilities into increasing investments in mechanisms such as energy efficiency and renewable energy.

As a result, energy firms are struggling with maintaining grid stability in efforts to provide baseload power using renewables. This is where the services of energy efficiency, storage and demand response technologies come into play, which are also presenting utilities with huge management challenges, according to the study.

Guthridge, added: “While consumers have turned their attention to sustainability, one size does not fit all. The messages and solutions from energy providers will require insights and tailored approaches aligned to the deeper motivations for each individual customer.”

EY also found that the COVID-19 pandemic has transformed consumers to be more energy sensitive.

Up to 64% of consumers who are working from home check their energy consumption at least once a month (12% higher than average), and 70% are interested in energy efficiency solutions (8% higher than average). This means utilities need to invest in solutions such as smart metering and prepayment, as well as tailor efficiency initiatives to meet consumer individual needs.

“The new generation of energy consumer is looking for options that provide transparency, flexibility and control — now is the time for energy providers to get creative,” said Guthridge.

The study also found that consumers now view digital services as the standard for utility operations with them demanding services such as grid automation and isolating to address power outages, as well as digital and online channels to address queries such as bills and outage reporting.

Find out more about the study.

The report, A New Space Race, is based on interviews with 500 senior managers from a range of infrastructure disciplines in 10 countries.

Key findings of the report include:

• Adaptability, sustainability and addressing climate change are top-of-mind for infrastructure leaders. To transform infrastructure in line with changing business models and regulations and to address business and environment challenges, the report calls for infrastructure developers, owners and managers to focus on adaptability, resiliency and decarbonisation.

Matthias Rebellius, CEO, Siemens Smart Infrastructure, said: “Infrastructure stakeholders are starting to act with real urgency. They recognise the need to accelerate decarbonisation, to build greater resilience and adaptability, while maintaining competitiveness.”

• The majority of energy infrastructure stakeholders say net zero energy is impossible without digitalisation. Up to 67% of the interviewed managers within the energy sector believe that net zero energy is impossible without digitalisation. The majority of investments in digitalisation over the next five years will be directed towards AI-driven prediction and automation, according to the study.

The study also found an increase in the number of organisations setting net-zero goals with 94% of those confident they will achieve carbon-neutrality by 2030.

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The majority also consider adaptability as the most critical factor when designing new buildings or facilities to allow the re-purposing of spaces to suit changing occupants.

• Infrastructure is lagging behind other industries in digitalisation progress

Up to 63% of the managers say the use of digital tools is lagging within the buildings and power segments. Only 31% of those questioned said they make full use of the data available to them, with almost half reporting they have not yet done so.

Rebellius, added: “Major change is challenging, but our highest goals are possible if we harness the power of data and new technologies, welcome greater cooperation and keep driving innovation.

“Buildings will be a lot more digital in the future. A facility manager will not only be able to automate, and remotely control more functionality, they will also benefit from a wider network of better sensors that flow into integrated visualisations and richer datasets. This will support a new level of fine-grained control and insights that are needed to make future buildings more resilient and flexible.” 

The report states that infrastructure managers are racing towards three spaces, including:

• A New Physical Space Race – The changing needs and expectations of people in their buildings, factories, facilities, offices, homes, and surrounding infrastructure.
• A New Digital Space Race – The evolution of the operational backbone of physical spaces, driven by advances in AI, automation, energy technologies, connectivity, and data-driven predictions.
• A New Earth Space Race – The impact of physical and digital space on the planet as a whole, including a revolution in energy systems that will create a sustainable legacy for future generations.

The report also concludes that the pandemic sparked an urgent race to adapt, digitalisation is a race into new frontiers and climate change is a race against time.

The report is available for download.

Wipro’s Boundaryless Enterprise solutions will be used by National Grid to combine managed services and multiple data centers to come up with next-generation hosting services.

This will result in enhanced programme governance and the migration of all server and application functions from traditional data centers.

The result will be optimal data management and utilisation for next-generation energy services by National Grid, according to the company.

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Shannon Soland, Chief Technology Officer, National Grid, said the partnership will help speed up the use of digital services “to achieve next-generation capabilities in infrastructure hosting services.”

Wipro’s expertise will be instrumental as we work to improve our operating model to align with our Net Zero carbon commitment.” 

Daniel Jablonski, Head of Cloud and Hosting Services, National Grid, added: “Our data center consolidation efforts will allow us to realize an over 60% reduction in our data center footprint as well as realise a 40% reduction in our data center CO2 emissions. 

“Additionally, this transformational programme, in conjunction with Wipro, will position our IT capabilities to enable modernised SDDC techniques, technologies, and operating model to accelerate our own digital transformation as National Grid continues to build the future of energy.” 

Other measures National Grid have implemented to prepare for future business cases include the installation of renewable energy and charging stations for electric vehicles, increasing investments in energy efficiency and demand response, and deploying green hydrogen infrastructure pilots.

In New York, National Grid partnered with utility NYPA to build the Smart Path Connect project, a $1 billion transmission upgrade that will enable the integration of 1GW of renewable energy onto the grid. Up to $700 million will be invested to ensure the transmission line in New York is able to transport an increasing amount of capacity coming from renewables, according to the statement.

Badar Khan, President, National Grid, US, added: “In just one year since the launch of our Net Zero Plan, we have rolled up our sleeves and made real progress on cutting emissions.

“We have a long way to go, but the next decade will require that we move quickly. We are keeping our customers updated every step of the way, releasing annual updates. I’m proud of the work we’ve done so far and look forward to picking up speed on the race to net zero.”

We can’t wait to see you in Milan

Enlit Europe will bring the energy community together during the live event in Milan (30 November – 2 December 2021). Register here

As if floods, fires, drought and extreme weather such as February’s disruptive deep freeze in Texas weren’t enough, the COVID-19 pandemic hit the industry last year seemingly out of the blue, creating uncertainty about safety while straining the bottom lines of many water utilities.

Despite that, the industry rose to the challenge, demonstrating remarkable agility and adaptability through its front-line professionals to keep the water flowing – true to its mission of delivering a clean, reliable and safe supply.

All the while, cybersecurity concerns continue to loom large, along with the sector’s chronic headache: what to do with an infrastructure well past its prime.

Black & Veatch’s 2021 Strategic Directions: Water Report, based on expert analyses of a survey of more than 200 US water sector stakeholders, examines those complexities in the transforming water, wastewater and stormwater industries striving to advance “One Water,” the premise that integrated and holistic water resource management — the value of all water regardless of history — must be considered when drafting plans and making investment decisions.

Technological advances from process intensification to data analytics and artificial intelligence continue to light a path forward, helping utilities and industry optimise asset performance, reduce costs, save energy, achieve regulatory compliance and bolster security.

More than ever, utilities are compelled to unleash the value of data and analytics in their operations to drive better decision-making, with heightened resilience as the end game. While consumers are sounding the call for more robust systems, the survey’s responses make clear that there’s more work to be done.

Amid infrastructure aging cConcerns, ‘Digital Water’ is key

To little surprise, three-quarters of survey respondents cited aging infrastructure as their foremost challenge in a chronically underfunded industry, far outdistancing issues such as making the case for capital improvement programs (34 percent), system resilience (30 percent) and managing capital costs (26 percent) (Figure 1). Resilience’s showing was up one spot from last year when one-quarter of respondents listed it among their three most challenging issues.

As utilities within the water industry continue to grapple with doing more with less, digital solutions can be a game-changer. Leveraging digital technology can harness data precisely, leading to enhanced capabilities in tracking consumption, driving customer engagement, optimising performance and prioritising investment dollars. Greater sustainability and resilience through informed asset management and planning are the benefits, along with an invaluable, holistic view of the water system.

Without question, data can guide utilities to higher operational efficiency, greater performance predictability, and better maintenance planning, along the way, boosting insight about when, where and how much to invest in systems. The opportunity to gather and integrate information using current data-collecting systems — complemented with evolving next-generation, cost-effective sensors and smart devices — enables predictive analytics to detect leaks, forecast usage, reduce costs and everything in between.

What’s not to like. But Black & Veatch’s survey shows that many utilities are missing out, harvesting more data but lacking insights about what to do with it all. Some two-thirds of respondents categorize their data management practice as robust and strengthening but not fully integrated, up slightly from a year earlier. An additional three in 10 respondents say their data is unintegrated and siloed, consistent with the 2020 survey. Just 5 percent called their data management robust and fully integrated.

In a separate question, half of the respondents say they’re collecting lots of data but not effectively leveraging it to actionable information, down from 60 percent in 2020 (Figure 2).

The bottom line: Siloed data keeps utilities from having a complete, clear picture of their assets and operations and how best to invest in them.

Still, utilities are exploring other digital options, including digital mapping to catalog utility systems and assets – evidence that digital technology is taking a firmer hold across the water and wastewater industry.

COVID-19 and the water sector

Across the spectrum of water services, the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact was profound the instant it began its spread through the U.S. in early 2020.

Industries and businesses shuttered, forcing tens of millions of layoffs that, in turn, produced delinquencies in water bills, cutting into the revenues and cash flows of utilities of all sizes. By and large, they suspended water and wastewater shutoffs to past-due accounts, both as a humane gesture and as an acknowledgment of the importance of water and sanitation during a health crisis, regardless of one’s ability to pay. Some utilities forgave the unpaid amounts; others deferred them.

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Closures of big commercial and industrial water customers adversely impacted utility revenues and cash flows as water demand shifted to residential areas, where displaced workers suddenly found themselves working remotely.

Two-thirds of respondents to Black & Veatch’s survey reported that the outbreak had at least a moderate impact on their day-to-day operations. But the sector weathered the storm and learned from it, demonstrating admirable agility and adaptability.

More than two-thirds of respondents credited COVID-19 for their organization’s increased consideration of technology, pointing to the pandemic-forced remote working practices of their employees. Thirty-two percent report giving more thought to customer engagement, with 29 percent saying they’re supporting increased remote operations and automation (Figure 3).

As the survey shows, utilities appear to be moving beyond their historical business activities and increasing their engagement with digital and electronic management approaches. Water, wastewater and stormwater utilities found that perhaps their data management wasn’t as robust as they thought during the operational challenges of COVID-19, inspiring them to ramp up efforts to harness and optimize the use of information.

Despite its impacts, the pandemic amplified the opportunity and need to accelerate innovation in strategy, operations and funding to protect human health and the environment, along the way greasing the economic engine that comes from infrastructure investment.

Resilience must be a priority

More than ever, the industry is at a crossroads to invest in its systems and pursue greater resilience manifested in so many forms, from financial resilience to the operational and strategic varieties. Yet again, there’s work to be done on that.

When respondents were asked to prioritize projects by their organization, those meant to ensure or enhance water quality — the chief mandate of water providers — held the most sway, with roughly four in 10 casting that as the highest prioritization. Efforts to bolster the conditions of assets or to replace them altogether was the principle priority of one-quarter of respondents, followed by addressing capacity and growth (17 percent) and operations and efficiency (12 percent). Projects meant to bolster resiliency drew just 5 percent, with nearly three in 10 labeling resilience as their lowest priority.

The takeaway: Many system managers direct their energy and focus on meeting state and federal water quality standards and simply keeping the system running. For managers, any issues beyond the job’s operational requirements tend to get kicked down the road as “tomorrow’s crisis” — something to address only after today’s crises are managed.

Nonetheless, utilities would be wise to leverage new funding sources, collaborate with partners, plan systems holistically and prioritize water as a way to revitalize, rejuvenate and equitably build our communities of tomorrow, with an eye on hardening their systems against a growing array of challenges.

Find out more about the study.

About the author

Cindy Wallis-Lage is president of Black & Veatch’s water business, leading the company’s efforts to address water infrastructure needs around the world. A global champion for the world’s water resources, she advocates understanding water’s true value and promoting its resilience so that communities may achieve their social, economic and environmental sustainability goals. Wallis-Lage has been involved in more than 100 projects worldwide, helping public and private entities successfully develop, enhance and manage their water, wastewater and stormwater facilities and infrastructure.

J.P. Nauseef, the CEO of JobsOhio, an economic development agency, said: “The opening of the AES Smart Operations Center in Ohio – the first of its kind in the United States – will launch a new era of innovative energy solutions that will reverberate across America.

“This facility represents AES’ longstanding commitment to the digital transformation of the energy industry, positioning Ohio at the leading edge of smart grid technology and sustainable, reliable power generation.”

The facility is located in Dayton and will be used by the utility as a research and development centre as well as a testbed for solutions that can accelerate the energy transition and the use of low-carbon energy solutions in the US and globally.

Bernerd Da Santos, the executive vice president of AES, added that the facility will serve the utility’s global innovation needs and has been sited in Davos owing to the city’s dedication to the development of digital solutions for the energy sector.

He said the facility will enable the utility to enhance customer services through the provision of new and advanced offerings.  

AES Ohio will employ new engineers and data scientists at the facility and in the process, help create new jobs and revive the economy from the impact of COVID-19.

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The energy company says it will leverage data analytics technologies from the centre to enhance its management of distributed assets.

The facility integrates operations and technologies deployed at the energy company’s Global Performance Monitoring and Analytics Center (PMAC) and Remote Operations and Control Center (ROCC) for US-based generation assets.

The need to establish the facility and decentralise operations at PMAC and ROCC is a testimony of the company’s heavy reliance on data and smart grid technologies to remain competitive in an increasingly changing energy landscape.

Smart grid deployment is a key focus for AES Ohio for the utility to achieve its smart energy plan, according to a statement in which the energy firm announced the approval of its $249 million grid modernisation proposal. By upgrading its infrastructure and technologies, AES Ohio says it will be able to achieve its decarbonisation, digitalisation and decentralisation goals.

The Public Utility Commission of Ohio provided AES Ohio with a greenlight to upgrade advanced metering infrastructure, install grid self-healing technologies and provide consumers with energy efficiency solutions and to expand its electric vehicles programme as part of efforts to enhance grid resilience.

The utility states the project will reduce the occurrence and duration of outages, will improve communication with customers and enable the provision of personalized customer services.

The research firm forecasts a 13.4% compound annual growth rate to be recorded through 2030 with global market revenue reaching approximately $5.4 billion in 2030 from $1.6 billion in 2021.

The US, China, and Western Europe lead the global market for smart meters, according to the study.

The study states that 65% of US consumers have a smart meter, and utilities’ need to optimise the management of distributed energy resources will help increase the penetration to 95% by 2030, according to the whitepaper.

“Although investor-owned utilities receive the lion’s share of recognition for national smart grid development, it is important to note the strong willingness and desire among midsized utilities to similarly invest in smart metering,” states Guidehouse Insights in the AI at the Grid Edge: How Inside-the-Meter Analytics Drive Value at the Grid Edge report.

When the smart meter concept gained popularity a decade ago, the majority of use cases were associated with reducing utilities’ non-revenue electricity through accurate and automated meter reading. However, advancements in technology are changing this with the introduction of new use cases and business models that are associated with grid modernisation, according to the paper.

Today, the increasing amount of data acquired from smart meters are being utilised by utilities to optimise workforce management, billing accuracy, and automate grid functionalities.

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As a result, capabilities including grid automation, energy efficiency, digital marketplaces, demand analytics, load disaggregation and customer segmentation are enabling utilities to enhance customer services, speed up the energy transition and improve the resilience of grid networks against climate change, according to the whitepaper.

Utilities are now able to personalise services to customers, for instance in the event an appliance inside a consumer’s home is using too much electricity, smart meter data can be used to provide energy-saving recommendations.

Energy companies will invest more in artificial intelligence and machine learning-based analytics to ensure the acquisition, processing, and use of smart meter data for real-time management and operations of DERs.

Guidehouse Insights predicts solutions for demand-side management and energy efficiency to lead the global spending on smart meter analytics. The spending is in line with efforts to leverage DERs to accelerate the decarbonisation of grid networks and the provision of affordable energy to consumers, according to the study.

For instance, with the use of electric vehicles increasing over the coming years, grid network operators will be forced to employ smart meter analytics to be able to use demand response to ensure EV charging does not strain the grid. The deployment of solar PV also continues to increase, however, utilities are struggling with fluctuations and curtailment, which they can address using real-time status data regarding consumer usage to optimise plants’ performance, states the study.

“Digitisation is no longer sufficient. Leading utilities are now transforming their businesses through AI-powered, forward-looking insights,” according to Guidehouse Insights.

In addition, the amount of data utilities are receiving from smart meters continues to increase as the number of units increases and consumer energy usage trends change. And as such, energy companies will need to employ advanced data management mechanisms and technologies such as AI and machine learning to be able to manage, process and make use of the data.

“The increasing volumes and types of smart meter data can seem overwhelming and are often characterized in terms like terabytes and petabytes,” says Guidehouse Insights.

As technology advances, utilities have moved from receiving data from consumer smart meters from a daily basis to hourly, then to 15-minute-basis and now to in near-real-time basis, states the whitepaper.

Guidehouse Insights reiterates that as the digital transformation of the utility sector progresses, the full benefits of smart meters will be slowly reaped as more use cases surface. However, collaboration is critical with “innovative analytics providers attracting a broad network of metering partners with a focus on inside-the-meter intelligence,” states the study.

Find out more about the whitepaper.

By David Friend, the CEO and Co-founder, Wasabi Technologies

Just as businesses around the world are leveraging emerging developments in analytics, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to drive better business decisions, the concept of smart cities aims to leverage intelligent technology to drive better quality of life for their citizens. Accelerated digital transformation has opened the door for cities to leverage intelligent technology that enhances citizen and government engagement, reduces environmental footprint and drives more effective, data-driven decision making for day-to-day necessities such as sanitation, transportation, and communication systems.

But these enhancements redefine the requirements for networks, storage structures and systems. The need for more dynamic computing and data storage will be a pivotal component in the “smart” city paradigm.

Selecting your storage strategy

Intelligent devices (sensors, autonomous machines, networked vehicles) implemented within smart cities generate an ever-increasing variety and volume of data that must be processed and stored. This process needs to be quick, reliable, cost-effective, and secure. Cities might not need access to all data at once, meaning there is more data being stored that still holds significance even when it’s dormant for long periods of time. With an effective storage strategy, this data can be analysed and leveraged at any time to help efficiently modernise entire regions.

System architectures that process data through a centralised enterprise data centre (on-premises or in the cloud) cannot meet the scaling and performance requirements of the smart city due to their limitations on optionality. To counter this, organisations, enterprises and managed service providers are increasingly moving their system architecture to the edge of the network (edge computing). Decentralisation enables data from devices, sensors and applications in the IoT to be analysed and processed locally before being transferred to an enterprise data centre or the cloud. This reduces latency and response time.

Traditional cloud providers typically come with rigid storage capacity, vendor lock-in, and high service fees for egress or ingress. Development teams that need easy, flexible, and cheap access to their data must be wary of these limitations. The cloud promises scale, flexibility, and seemingly infinite capacity, but these limitations put a cap on what’s possible. The reality is that budgets are tight and city development teams need a “bottomless cloud”- one in which storage prices are low enough that IT teams will not even question how much data they are storing or backing up –  to cater to these new IoT environments. This gives developers the ability to store endless amounts of data without the stress of draining their budget and allows them to effectively utilise stored data to further enhance the development of their city.

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Infrastructure-as-a-Service frees resources

Because smart city development revolves around optimising resource use, more organisations are turning to off-site management. They are outsourcing the management of their infrastructure, within which the data is generated, to an external service provider. What is known as Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) or Serverless Computing is one of the three basic pillars of cloud computing. The goal: cities only pay for the resources they actually use.

IaaS offers managed, on-demand cloud edge computing services for this purpose. These on-demand solutions are provided in close proximity to users, in radio towers and other remote locations. They help improve the speed and scalability of bandwidth-intensive and delay-sensitive applications by eliminating WAN latency, congestion and performance bottlenecks. After all, the longer it takes to transport data across the computer network, the longer users have to wait for their provisioning. For example, in Angers, France, the country has an open data-driven initiative that gives citizens access to their online data portal through an app. This provides the public with access to real-time data on parking availability, current air quality levels, and public transport timetables.

Providers supply users with various network-based components: software, cloud storage, virtualisation environments and network structures. They help companies and organisations automate administrative tasks and scale data management based on real-world needs. As we continue to feel and see the impacts of global warming, smart cities can utilise the data collected by technologies such as energy-efficient buildings or air-quality sensors to remain environmentally friendly. This data can be analysed to determine what technologies need to be increased in order to reduce the city’s ​​environmental footprint.

Enabling a smart future

The world’s top cities are already beginning their transformation to keep up with the growing demand for resources to support the growing population. Before we know it, various sectors of urban life will be interconnected through intelligent technology, further optimising the use of shared resources. But nothing can be done without data and data storage. We must collect, manage, and evaluate past data to continuously improve the technologies in place. Optimising cloud-based services, such as IaaS can aid in data management. Addressing the growing demand for data storage and computing power capacity is one key factor in enabling this “smart” future.

Answers to this question were provided during a webinar entitled Top 10 Global Economic Trends for 2021 and 2022 hosted by research firm Frost & Sullivan. Participants were asked to highlight trends that they believe will have the most significant impact on the energy market in 2022.

50% highlighted decarbonisation and the green transition, whilst 36% said digital transformation. 9% said they think everything as a service will have the most significant impact.

Commenting on the results, Aroop Zutshi, global president at Frost & Sullivan, said he was not surprised by the results.

Zutshi said: “Companies that embarked on digital transformation were able to manage the pandemic more than those that are not digitally enabled. Digital transformation will continue to play an important role in the next year and years to come and will be forced on any organisation going forward.”

E-mobility

Zutshi said he anticipates the adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) to increase in Europe, North America, and Asia as the green recovery takes priority.

Zutshi also believes Europe will hold a lion’s share of the new EV market in 2022 whilst China will be the world’s largest single market.

The US will ramp up its EV production in chase of President Biden’s plan to have EVs account for 50% of all vehicle sales by 2030. However, the shortage of chipsets will continue in 2022 and will slow down EV manufacturing at a global scale, he said.

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Renewable energy and decarbonisation

Supply chain constraints of components for wind and solar energy projects will continue through the first half of 2022 resulting in delays in project rollouts, according to Zutshi.

However, he said he expects OEMs and suppliers of components to recover from the supply chain disruptions caused by the pandemic by employing various digital mechanisms.

He said the decarbonisation of the global economy and hard-to-abate industries will intensify with an increase in the deployment of hydrogen, electrification technologies and energy efficiency.

Digital technologies and the green recovery

Zutshi said governments will continue to incentivize the ESG agenda whilst “digital sustainability will shape the resilience of water utilities and reduce emissions.”

He said environmental-conscious consumers will demand smart products, resulting in service providers aligning their operations with eco-friendly business cases, technologies and resources.

Neha Anna Thomas, senior economist at Frost & Sullivan said she expects advanced economies to expedite green recovery policies in 2022.

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Other trends Frost & Sullivan predicts will shape 2022 include:

• An increase in 5G use as modernisation speeds up. Energy companies will also continue to adopt cloud computing.
• More cybersecurity solutions will be deployed to address the increase in attacks. Governments and utilities are expected to put more focus on the development of innovative and resilient solutions.
• The construction of green buildings will grow driven by national carbon-neutrality targets.
• In Africa, foreign investments will create opportunities in green hydrogen production whilst national targets and regulatory changes will improve the participation of the private sector and international companies in renewable energy projects.

Some key trends that were witnessed in 2021 are expected to set the stage for 2022. For instance, the positive developments in 2021 around policy, regulation, and commitments by governments to support the move to low-carbon energy-based economies.

Examples of these policy commitments include the enacted Fit for 55 law by the European Commission, the approval by the US Senate of President Joe Biden’s $1 trillion infrastructure bill, the introduction of the Green Hydrogen Strategy by the UK government and targets that were set by the US government to reduce the cost of long-duration energy storage systems and accelerate wind and solar energy deployment.

Governments, utilities and energy stakeholders are expected to embark on measures that enable them to move closer to achieving goals set in 2021.

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Negative developments such as the first increase in prices across all solar energy market segments since 2014 in the US and soaring energy prices in Europe are also expected to push governments to come up with innovative ways to address them.

It was no surprise that decarbonisation and net-zero targets were highlighted throughout the event. Several esteemed Indonesian government energy leaders used their platform as an opportunity to highlight their commitment to carbon neutrality and the Paris Agreement.

“First, deploying decarbonisation may align with other necessary goals which are reliability and cost affordability. Secondly, we expect the decarbonisation programme may stimulate national rise of research and development of low-carbon technology hence energy transition may be ultimately carried out using domestic technology and resources,” said Zulkifli Zaini, President Director for PT. PLN (Persero).

While in a session entitled, Government Strategies Underpinning Energy Transition, Zulvia Dwi Kurnaini, Senior Analyst, Fiscal Policy Agency, Ministry of Finance, fielded questions regarding electricity subsidies and financing decarbonisation.

“The price for renewable (RE) energy is a bit higher which will increase the cost for the subsidy. The government should have a very balanced policy while reducing oil and gas and replacing with RE energy,” Kurnaini said.

Another of the key themes of the event ‘Revival of the National Electricity Industry to support Clean Energy Policy,’ Rida Mulyana, Director General of Electricity representing the Honourable Minister of Energy & Mineral Resources, addressed the illustrious attendees Tuesday morning and shared several updates, delivering the Keynote Ministerial Address. 

“Through the momentum of this National Electricity Day, we are all required to rise and continue the development in the electricity sub-sector, including carrying out the energy transition to cleaner and more sustainable energy,” the Director-General began.

The Director voiced his encouragement of entrepreneurs in the electricity sector to provide sufficient electricity supply through the development of electricity infrastructure, including notably, the incorporation of renewable energy (RE) and reaffirmed Indonesia’s commitment to the Paris Agreement as well as reaching the goal of 23% renewable energy potential (EBT) by 2025. Regarding the Indonesian Electricity Supply Business Plan (RUPTL), the Director shared that the latest copy is more sustainably-minded or ‘greener’ than the last.

“In the latest RUPTL, it is estimated that there will be a reduction in the level of greenhouse gas emissions by around 70.23 million tons of CO2 in 2030 when compared to the PLN RUPTL 2019-2028,” the Director said. 

The panel titled ‘Securing a Sustainable, Reliable, Affordable Energy Future for Indonesia: A Policy Review’ was a lively discussion with two different approaches to sustainability where the yet to arrive RUPTL was mentioned as an obstacle to a clear renewable pathway. 

Dharma Djojonegoro, the CEO for PT of Adaro Power, shared his matter-of-fact views and noted that the company needs government backing to expand its sustainable actions. Whereas, Professor Dr. Mohamad Ikhsan of the Institute for Economics and Social Research and Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Indonesia, had a more principled vision. 

“People respond to incentive. I think we will move to RE energy because it has become a global initiative. I think when we look at coal, this is the wrong incentive here. Coal is the cheapest source of energy, roughly 4-5 cents, but we don’t internalise the environmental cost. We signed the Paris Agreement, and then we built 35 coal-fired plants. It’s completely contradictory,” the Professor said. 

Djojonegoro was sure to point out that without the RUPTL, it has been challenging to choose how to move forward sustainably but that they are still doing the best they can. 

“I think especially this year, we are doubling down and are no longer building coal power plants and going to renewables instead. The intent is there. The challenge from a policy perspective, as an IPP, is that we are all waiting for the RUPTL plan that has been delayed two years now. From a private company perspective, we have always been agnostic.”

“While we are waiting for the RUPLT, we are doing what we can. We are already building solar and floating solar farms, which shall be the largest floating in Indonesia. This is the stuff we are doing. We are also looking for other opportunities that don’t make us wait for the RUPTL,” Djojonegoro said.

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Based on the statements the Director-General of Electricity said within his speech, it looks like the RUPTL could be released soon but as we know it was due last year. Still, in the meantime, he remained consistent with his focus on sustainable messaging. 

“In conclusion, we would like to reiterate that the development of the electricity sub-sector in Indonesia is entering a new era where new and renewable energy is the focus of development and a medium for the transition to cleaner energy while still maintaining the principle of electricity availability in sufficient quantity, good quality, and reasonable prices. The Ministry of Energy and Renewable Resources realises that this requires synergy and collaboration between the government and stakeholders, including the role of the Indonesian Electricity Society and the electricity industry business players in supporting the ‘Clean Energy Policy’ and the successful transformation of the electricity sector,” Rida Mulyana, Director General of Electricity said.

Indonesia is moving towards the 2030 target of decreasing its carbon dioxide emissions unconditionally by 29% and conditionally by 41% but it will not happen overnight.

“I think the key word here is the word transition [meaning] you can’t go to zero in two years. We are very happy to support in any way we can,” Djojonegoro said.

It might be a waiting game for till Indonesia achieves carbon neutrality or even releases the RUPTL for now, but your chance to be informed on the latest industry updates begins today when you review the on-demand Festival content. See what new information was uncovered during the event here. 

The utility, which provides services to consumers in 273 cities in China, signed a cooperation agreement with the AI firm, which will enable the use of cloud and digital solutions to meet carbon emissions reductions goals, according to the statement.

China Gas will be spending 936 million yuan ($145.1 million) to move its operations to Baidu’s AI cloud platform under the first phase of the partnership. This will enable the utility to build customised smart grid and energy monitoring, gas usage prediction and smart customer service applications.

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The two parties will kickstart their partnership by establishing the China Gas Digital Technology Committee that will set up the utility’s digitalisation roadmap and ensure that the company’s business cases and technologies are in line with industry standards. Baidu will also develop advanced digital management systems within the AIoT, big data and AI segments for the utility.

This will enable China Gas to prepare for future business models and be able to meet changing consumer demands.

The two will also work together to help the government and enterprises co-operate on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, as well as create an ecosystem that enables the participation of consumers, automakers, technology firms and manufacturers in enhancing the operations of the grid network, in climate change mitigation and developing new mechanisms that are capable of delivering the energy transition and smart grids.

Baidu will also train China Gas’ professionals.

Yong Huang, executive president of China Gas, said the project is part of efforts by the utility to leverage advanced solutions to improve services to its 40 million customers.

Haifeng Wang, Baidu’s Chief Technology Officer, added: “We are in a golden era in which digital technology and traditional industries are deeply integrated.”