Search Results for: smart grids

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The coming together of the Internet of Things and Smart Grids

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I was asked to speak at the recent SAP TechEd && d-code (yes, two ampersands, that’s the branding, not a typo) on the topic of the Internet of Things and Energy.

This is a curious space, because, while the Internet of Things is all the rage now in the consumer space, the New Black, as it were; this is relatively old hat in the utilities sector. Because utilities have expensive, critical infrastructure in the field (think large wind turbines, for example), they need to be able to monitor them remotely. These devices use Internet of Things technologies to report back to base. this is quite common on the high voltage part of the electrical grid.

On the medium voltage section, Internet of Things technologies aren’t as commonly deployed currently (no pun), but mv equipment suppliers are more and more adding sensors to their equipment so that they too can report back. In a recent meeting at Schneider Electric’s North American headquarters, CTO Pascal Brosset announced that Schneider were able to produce a System on a Chip (SoC) for $2, and as a consequence, Schneider were going to add one to all their equipment.

And then on the low voltage network, there are lots of innovations happening behind the smart meter. Nest thermostats, Smappee energy meters, and SmartThings energy apps are just a few of the many new IoT things being released recently.

Now if only we could connect them all up, then we could have a really smart grid.

In case you are in the area, and interested, I’ll be giving a more business-focussed version of this talk at our Business of IoT event in London on Dec 4th.

The slides for this talk are available on SlideShare.

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Logica’s Global Utilities Director, Nigel Spooner talks Smart Meters, Smart Grids and the DCC

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At the recent Logica Utility Analyst day, I talked to Logica’s Global Utilities Director, Nigel Spooner about Smart Meters, Smart Grids and the DCC – here’s a transcription of our conversation:

Tom Raftery: Hi everyone, welcome to GreenMonk TV, I’m in the Logica building in London with Nigel Spooner. Nigel is Global Utility Director for Logica. Nigel we’ve had a bit of a discussion here during the analyst event that I have just been attending, around smart meters and smart grids. Now we’re in the middle of one of the world’s worst economic crises in a long time, why would utilities want to be spending money on rolling out smart meters?

Nigel Spooner: Yeah it’s a good question isn’t it, it is difficult when money is tight, but there are benefits to smart metering, both in terms of the consumer being able to manage their energy consumption more closely, and also in terms of the distribution companies being able to run their networks more efficiently, but also and importantly being been able to cater for consumers doing their own generation for instance with photovoltaics and also for things like incorporating electric vehicles into the network.

Tom Raftery: So this is kind of life smart grid stuff and can you give us a quick idea, I mean you talked just a little bit about it sidewise, give me kind of an overall picture of what a smart grid is?

Nigel Spooner: A smart grid is difficult to define very succinctly, but it is a distribution grid where there is much more control over the way that power flows both on to and off the grid. At the moment grids are very much one way. The power goes in from the power station, it goes through the network and into the consumer.

Increasingly we’re having to cope for the fact that the consumers themselves are generating power, they are also using things like electric vehicles which have to be charged up at particular times, they need to be controlled if the networks are not to be overloaded, and therefore the distribution grids have to be much more responsive to those loads and those demands going on them. Smart metering gives the distribution companies the opportunity to know what’s going on on that grid to a much closer degree, and in real time than they having been doing so far.

Tom Raftery: And advantages to consumers…

Nigel Spooner: To consumers the advantage is that they can get first of all more flexible tariffs, so we may be able to get tariffs that are much more aligned with the way in which we actually consume energy, rather than being just a blanket tariff that’s the same for everyone. There will be much more information on the energy that one is using, so that for instance one can see when one is going for a rather large load and to turn things off if you need to, but also there is the ability increasingly to respond to variable pricing, so that if we know for instance electricity is going to be expensive in three days time because of demands on the system, then we can react to that and make sure that our large items like air-conditioning units that’s on, do not get turned on when the price is very high. So we should be able to save both energy and money through the information that smart metering gives.

Tom Raftery: And, I’ve heard a bit about this DCC thing that’s been rolled out here in the UK, can you tell me a little bit about that?

Nigel Spooner: Well DCC is simply the organization that is going to be setup or is been setup by the British government to basically take charge of all the data that is coming off smart meters as we roll them out. This will be collected centrally and then distributed to the market participants and the view is that, that will be the most efficient way to manage this huge increase in information that smart meters are providing. By doing that it should make it easier for participants to come into the market and it should make it easier for consumers to get the best deal on their energy.

Tom Raftery: Where is Logica in all this?

Nigel Spooner: Well I’m delighted to say that all the things we’ve been talking about require relatively sophisticated information technology services to enable them to happen. Logica has for many years been in the business of providing the systems and the services that are required to make those infrastructures operate effectively and we will of course continue to do so.

Tom Raftery: Okay, great. Nigel that’s been fantastic, thanks for talking to us today.

Nigel Spooner: Thank You Tom.

Full disclosure – Logica paid my travel and accommodation to attend this event.

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Smart Grids for Europe white paper presented by SAP to EU Energy Commissioner

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12036 NM Smart Grids for Europe En

SAP recently presented a white paper entitled Smart Grids for Europe – Benefits, Challenges and Best Practices to EU commissioner G?nter Oettinger.

The paper makes the case that there are few (i.e. no) ICT transformations that are as promising as Smart Grids in meeting Europe’s urgent energy challenges. The paper also makes a compelling case for Europe to leverage its continental scale and develop a single market Smart Grid. In such a market, on cloudy days, excess electricity generated from wind and wave energy in Ireland and Spain, could be sold into the German market if solar farms, for example were under-producing! Wind is a notoriously variable supplier, but given a large enough grid, it becomes quite stable (the wind is always blowing somewhere!).

The paper identifies the challenges facing the European energy sector currently –

  • Growing demand and rising prices
  • Ageing infrastructure – the electric utility infrastructure in most of Europe is between 60 and 80 years old
  • Climate change and sustainability – 20% reduction in GHG by 2020
  • Energy efficiency – the EU has a 20% energy efficiency target
  • Energy market liberalisation – both generators and consumers now have the right to transact business across internal EU borders
  • Security of supply – reduction of imports and esp fossil fuels

The paper went on to outline the advantages to Europe of smart grids – benefits for both the consumer (residential as well as industrial) and for the retailers and generators. Further benefits come from helping Europe meet its GHG reduction targets by facilitating greater penetration of renewables onto the grid and from making Europe more competitive in world Smart Grid markets.

The current state of Smart Grid deployments in Europe is, however, at best, early stage. The existing efforts are largely national with little coordination among them.

The white paper recommends developing an EU legislative Framework for Smart Grids – complete with proposed milestones. It further recommends incentives for investments in Smart Grids, common European standards for Smart Grids, ensuring privacy, security and trust in Smart Grids and consumer awareness campaigns, amongst other suggestions.

This paper is well worth a read, whether you are EU-based or not, if you have any interest in our future energy roadmap.

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What is the best communications protocol for Smart Grids?

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Communications tower

Photo credit urbanfeel

One of the key tenets of a Smart Grid is that you have real-time, two-way communications between the consumer and the utility company. To enable this a communications infrastructure needs to be rolled out. Before that can happen though, we need to examine the different communications protocols to find the most suitable one.

I was talking to Andy Slater, the EMEA Marketing Director for Sensus, the other day. Sensus are the company providing the communications platform for UK-based Arqiva’s Smart Grid pilot in Reading [PDF]. And their proposed Smart Grid communications infrastructure for all of Britain. While, in North America Sensus have 8 million end points rolled out across 225 utilities.

The Sensus solution uses long range radio to communicate with smart meters. This allows Sensus to achieve a 99.5% first-time connection rate during installations, according to Slater. This is higher than most other technologies (GPRS, WiMax, etc.) and so saves a considerable amount of money by obviating the need for a second call out or re-engineering.

When I mentioned that Power Line Communications (PLC) would, by definition, have as close as possible to 100% first-time connectivity, Andy countered that that’s all well and good for electrical meters but the Sensus solution also works for gas and water meters. He then went on to point out that PLC requires far more repeaters to boost the signal and that it is not suitable for high voltage equipment.

The other advantage which Andy mentioned is that for gas and water meters which are not powered, battery life is going to be an issue. GPRS and mobile solutions require a lot of power and their battery life may be as short as 5 years whereas Andy claimed because the power requirement of long range radio is lower, the batteries in their meters could last up to 15 years, thereby reducing service calls to replace depleted batteries.

Listening to Andy, you could be forgiven for wondering why any utility would go with a communications protocol other than long-range radio – so can anyone enlighten me – what is the best communications protocol for Smart Grids?

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Dude – Where’s My Customer? On Telcos, Utilities and Smart Grids. Towards a “SIM Card” for Smart Grids

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SIM card reader
We had a really solid briefing with Convergys today. The firm sells software and services to telcos and utilities for customer care and billing – it has 80k employees worldwide, 550+ clients, and $3bn in revenue.

According to Greenmonk research most?utilities are failing to understand the the need to put the customer right at the center of their Smart Grid strategies. I pushed Kit Hagen, senior director of marketing, on the issue and he came back with a strong response.

“We often see utilities refer to IT as “the meter to cash process”- there is no customer in that. They’re calling the customer a meter.

Now you’re not going to just have disaggregated generation, but potentially a bunch of devices sitting behind the meter itself, and utilities should want to understand whats going on there. The world doesn’t end at the smart meter: think of kitchen appliances, for example.

This is an area the utilities need to start addressing. We can enable the technology, we can help the utilities…”

Electricity microgeneration, supported, for example, by feedin tariffs. How would a utility handle that from a billing perspective, send out two bills – one for consumption and one for production?

Kit’s colleague Mary Ann Tillman, director of product marketing, offered up a near perfect analogy for the kinds of challenge we’ll need to fix – mobile phones and SIM cards.

“Think of roaming. We need the same model for electric vehicles. How is someone that travels from London to Edinburgh in their EV going to be billed for recharging?”

Great analogy Mary – and that’s just within the UK… what about Pan-European requirements? For context – in case you have missed it, it turns out that EVs are one of the promising distributed storage mechanisms- the car battery becomes part of a “virtual utility”, as per Better Place.?We’re going to need the equivalent of GSM, and SIM card standards to support smart grid ecosystems of networked devices.

Not to put too fine a point on it – wireless communications companies are rather more used to this kind of model than traditional utilities, which could prove to be a competitive advantage. The role of the traditional utility billing engine fundamentally changes in smart grids – its definitely time to start refactoring these systems. T-Mobile is already driving a SIM to smart grid integration strategy.

Top down, customer takes what we give them just won’t work in smart grids. Roaming puts the customer first, and “number portability” will have to be part of the model. As we have been saying lately – smart grids and wireless networking are converging.

disclosure: Convergys is not a client.

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Power Companies and Smart Grids: a Greenmonk link roundup

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One of our prospects asked about relevant Greenmonk research? in her space- that is: utility company customer care and billing. So Tom compiled a few links and fired them over. It seems to me though that you might also find the roundup interesting. So here are some links showing you the kind of thing Greenmonk is thinking and researching about in terms of Smart Grids and how they will affect utility companies and their customers:

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Are utility companies ready for full smart grids?

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Power management display

In the Smart Grid Heavy Hitters video interview series I have been publishing here on GreenMonk, one of the questions I ask all interviewees is, “What is a Smart Grid?” Almost all the interviewees talk about an infrastructure capable of full end-to-end, two-way communications. That is, communication from utilities down to the appliance level in-home, and from appliances back up to utilities.

Great. But what does this mean in practice and is this something utility companies have given enough thought to?

Utility companies currently typically take one meter reading per month. With the roll out of smart meters and smart grids that will change drastically. If a utility goes to 15 minute meter reads, we are talking about a shift from one meter read a month to around 2,880 meter reads a month (4 x 24 x 30 = 2,880).

This has huge implications for a utility company’s IT infrastructure. They will need to capture and store orders of magnitude more information than they have ever needed to previously.

On top of that, the information coming from smart meters is vastly more complex than the simple output of analog meters, as well. Particularly if the consumer is also a producer, selling energy back to the grid (via generation or from storage), getting rebates for lowering consumption in times of peak demand and/or getting roaming bills for charging up electric vehicles at public charging facilities, for example.

What will utility companies do with this new data?

Well, the primary use of this data will be for billing. Do utility companies have billing systems in place which are able to take in these vast quantities of data and output sensible bills?

Today’s bills are generated off that single monthly meter read, however bills generated from 2,880 meters reads a month (or even 720 – one meter read per hour) will be very different. They should be easy to understand, reflect the intelligence gained from the extra information and offer customers ways to reduce their next bill based on this.

Crucially too, utility companies will need to be pro-active in contacting people who go out of their normal pattern of usage/billing, otherwise we’ll see even more consumer backlash against smart grid roll-outs.

Obviously, transitioning away from paper bills to electronic ones will vastly enrich the possibilities utilities have with data presentation for customers as well as offering utilities ways to monetise their billing delivery (Google Adwords for bills anyone?).

On the consumer side, consumers will need to be able to see their energy consumption in real-time. Not only that, but to ensure that they act appropriately on the information, the user interface will be critical. A poor user experience will see a deluge of calls swamping customer care as people struggle to understand their consumption patterns. Or worse, mis-understand and send their bills soaring!

Consumers will need to be given ubiquitous, secure access to their energy consumption information. But more than that, consumers will also need to be given the tools to help them reduce their bills, without necessarily reducing their consumption (i.e. load shifting).

This will also necessitate a move to smart appliances by the consumer (appliances which can listen for price signals from the smart grid and modify behaviour according to a configurable set of rules). The Smart Appliances market is expected to reach $15bn by 2015 so the move to smart appliances can represent a new revenue stream for utility companies. Especially if they, with consumers consent, utilise energy-profile information from consumers smart meters to make more appropriate energy saving suggestions.

All of these changes require seismic shifts by utility companies both in terms of IT investments, but also in terms of their approach to customer care and communications.

Are they up for the challenges ahead? With the increasing liberalisation of energy markets and growth in consumer choices, they better be!

You should follow me on twitter here.

You should follow me on twitter here.

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GreenMonk talks Smart Grids with Wattpic Energia

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While at the Smart Grids Europe conference last week, I had a talk with Dr Hugo Niesling of Wattpic Energia.

Wattpic are based in Barcelona and while their main product is photovoltaic trackers, they do a lot of research into demand response technologies and have a microgrid near Girona which has been operating successfully off-grid for 15 years making extensive use of demand response and was the only place with power when recent snow storms left 250,000 people in the region without power!

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GreenMonk talks Smart Grids with Schneider Electric

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While at the Smart Grids Europe conference last week, I had a talk with Daniel Cumming of Schneider Electric. Schneider are one of the world’s oldest and largest companies in the energy space having been founded in 1836 (yes 18!) and with revenues of ?15.79bn in 2009 [PDF].

We chatted about two of Schneider’s offerings in the Smart Grid space – their remote telecontrol product set and their power monitoring products.

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GreenMonk talks Smart Grids with BPL Global

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While at the Smart Grids Europe conference last week, I had a talk with Pascal Julienne, President & EMEA Director of BPL Global.

BPL Global, who have been making smart grid software since 2005 produce a smart grid platform for utilities and have rolled out their solution to First Energy (one of the largest utilities in the US) .

Despite the background noise we had a great chat about Smart Grids, smart buildings and energy resource management.