To meet pressing climate goals, today’s power plants must dynamically balance complex energy inputs with fluctuating demands. Forward-thinking operators will strengthen their ecosystems to rise to the challenge, writes Ann Moore, industry principal – power & utilities, AVEVA.
The global power community is contending with more change than it has in a century. With all eyes on the Paris climate goals, plants and grid operators are juggling renewables and conventional energy under ever-more dynamic and challenging conditions.
The US aims to transition the grid to 100% carbon-free electricity by 2035. And the remaining G7 countries have pledged to move to predominantly decarbonized electricity by the same date. It’s hard to overstate how big a transformation this represents.
While this goal-setting is an important step in decarbonisation, the power industry still has many practical challenges to solve. Renewables can only produce power intermittently, and the industry needs to get better at moving power to places where renewable energy resources aren’t available.
Further challenges arrive alongside the rise of electric vehicles – energy demand is becoming increasingly unpredictable. How can grid operators ensure that just the right amount of power is put onto the grid at the right time and in the right place?
Unquestionably, as the physical grid becomes less centralized and comprises multiple power sources, flexibility and visibility are critical. Today’s grid infrastructure requires rock-solid reliability, resilience and foresight.
The good news is that the big technologies we all know about are already supporting power companies in their transformation. The industrial internet of things (IIoT), founded on digitalization, enhanced with artificial intelligence (AI), augmented reality (AR), machine learning and the cloud, is driving newfound levels of connectivity, transparency, and collaboration.
By leveraging the cloud and AI-powered insights to analyse power supply and demand, consumption patterns, and weather conditions, utilities can optimize load balancing, increase reliability, reduce power wastage, and identify opportunities for energy conservation.
The use of innovative technologies is crucial in helping utilities to reduce O&M costs, operate and manage the grid efficiently, and predict unexpected disruptions.
Digital twins can add exponential value to the modern grid ecosystem. A digital twin of the smart grid network can serve as the virtual representation of its physical and digital components (generation, transmission, distribution, consumer and distributed energy resources assets), so that stakeholders can analyse and react to operation events dynamically.
What’s more, real-time data sharing has emerged as the linchpin solution for connecting key stakeholders to enable better insights. Power industry players are analysing and sharing this information to make faster and more informed decisions that drive resilience and profitability.
In this way, a solid data infrastructure framework is an essential foundation for energy firms.
With data infrastructure that supports secure, efficient sharing, everyone from energy generators to grid operators to utilities and service providers can ensure supply meets demand. Integrating information from an increasingly diverse group of data sources is key to breaking down silos and building a holistic view of the grid so power companies keep it reliable and resilient.
Power industry leaders are also speeding up their investments in distributed energy resources (DER). This type of investment requires companies to collaborate more deeply with connected ecosystems of customers, suppliers, business partners and others through edge-to-cloud data collection and visualization capabilities.
Such digital metrics are also enabling power companies to uncover potential new revenue streams. For example, US-based power provider Dominion Energy used cloud-based AVEVA Data Hub to gather and share data about its energy sources and power flows in a real-time, cloud interface with customers, helping them to comply with their net-zero commitments.
Using trackable sustainability data, Dominion’s customers were able to provide proof of their low-carbon energy supplies to investors and ESG auditors, creating a revenue source for Dominion.
The key to next-generation power networks – and realising a decarbonized future – lies in building a single source of truth within a trusted ecosystem of partners.