The utility industry wanted more data, and now it’s available in quantities that may not have been foreseen. What are the best ways of managing all that data, interpreting it and getting the most value? Smart grid professionals offered thoughts on how to do it right and get the business intelligence to succeed in the next decade. Jeremy Eaton, Honeywell Smart Grid Solutions VP and general manager, provided a succinct summary of the issue: “In recent years, Honeywell has seen the widespread deployment of smart meters and a corresponding increase in access to granular energy use data. At the same time, the majority of homes and businesses in the United States (and beyond) have Wi-Fi connections, and want remote access to information through smartphones and other mobile devices. As a result, smart grid deployments will need to be tightly integrated as utilities look for combined hardware and software solutions that deliver energy data – and coaching – in a seamless manner.”
Reliability
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The head of the agency responsible for the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile said on Friday that he will leave his post in January, Reuters reported, six months after three elderly peace activists broke into the government’s maximum-security facility for weapons-grade uranium. The departure of Thomas D’Agostino, the administrator at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), has nothing to do with the security breach, an NNSA official said. D’Agostino, who worked for the government for more than 36 years and had been head of the NNSA for more than five years, had been asked to stay in the job but declined, the official said.
In the past year, the grid has seen some remarkable highs, while also being tested to meet the basic needs of society.
On one hand, big advances have flourished, fundamentally changing the way we power our lives. Roof-mounted solar panels have gone from a costly oddity to a competitive selling point for many homes. Battery-powered vehicles have gained traction – once a car-show phenomenon, plug-in cars are now a fast growing segment. On the other hand, the idea of progress has been challenged by a slew of weather woes that have shaken consumer confidence in our energy infrastructure. A series of intense storms, heat waves, and drought combined to make 2012 one of the toughest years globally for the grid in many years. Keep reading →
The bad news – there are big, big challenges looming for the electric utility industry. The good news – agencies and regulators are increasingly aware of these painful truths and, therefore, increasingly willing to discuss solutions. That was the message from Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman Jon Wellinghoff during a briefing on Capitol Hill this week.
1. Falling load growth. Wellinghoff cited a recent study from the Brattle Group that confirms a 30-year trend of falling growth in energy usage. Today, the average growth is roughly 1% per year, down from the 5-10% common in the middle of the last century. And no, today’s anemic growth is not due just to the recession. It is an unstoppable result of our march to energy efficiency, as evidenced by LED lights, Net Zero buildings, variable speed motors, and more. Keep reading →
One of the primary concerns about electric cars among vehicle buyers remains the question of where they can plug it in. IBM, which has made a specialty in recent years of using its experience with data platforms to enable shifts in energy usage and monitoring, is now working in a slate of European countries to “allow energy providers, car manufacturers and charging point owners to share integrate services on one common IT platform.”
IBM says the concept is similar to mobile phone roaming, with drivers able to charge and pay in any location across borders. The demonstration project, launching this week in Europe and called B2B Marketplace, builds on efforts to improve EV production and distribution in a number of European countries, including Ireland, Spain, Germany and Denmark among others. Keep reading →
The language of short-lived sales and low-cost financing is more usually heard around used-car lots and department stores, but there isn’t any reason the same factors can’t apply to the utility business.
The short-term, act-now opportunity open to the power sector in the US is clear in an environment that will dictate significant capital investment, the authors of a new report from consulting firm Booz & Company argue. Keep reading →
Does anyone use the term eco-terrorists any more? Since Greenpeace stopped tying themselves to power plant smokestacks on a regular basis and global economic leaders decided they’d rather deal with the financial crisis than with climate change, the mood among those who advocate for environmental rules has evolved to one of public education and consensus-seeking.
That doesn’t mean that natural gas magnates should rest easy though, or at least that’s what the people traditionally charged with evaluating the manifold security risks for energy companies operating in harsh environments are arguing. Keep reading →
Some US utilities could have weathered Hurricane Sandy better than they did if they had invested in smart grid improvements such as smart-metering, outage management, and distribution management systems, a senior GE official said.
John McDonald, Director of Technical Strategy and Policy Development for GE Digital Energy, said utilities that have not yet installed the technology would have known about outages more quickly, been able to swiftly identify their locations, and been able to assign repair crews more efficiently if they had the enhancements in place. Keep reading →
GE’s Grid IQ Solutions as a Service (SaaS) helps utilities deliver grid modernization technologies, while enabling consumers to use energy more efficiently
Grid modernization projects typically come with a sizable capital-investment requirement and a certain amount of risk when making a long-term technology decision. In addition, there are deployment risks with integrating the disparate software applications associated with delivering the desired level of grid automation. Many small- and mid-market utilities that deliver electric utility services or additional water and gas utility services can benefit from GE’s SaaS offering. Keep reading →
Energy Sector Disruption: Three Political Lessons from 2012
By Peter GardettWorking in the energy sector is an inherently political activity. I once sat opposite a friend of a friend at lunch, and when she found out that I covered the energy business and then quizzed me on the industry’s practices, asked if I found people often wanted to hit me. I don’t find that, but the way a modern economy depends on the energy business means that everyone – along the entire spectrum of beliefs – also has opinions about its politics in ways that don’t necessarily reflect a subtle, shifting, complex reality.
Over the course of 2012, we’ve been focusing on the issues at play in energy politics, and have gathered them together in a special hub that can be found on Breaking Energy here. Keep reading →