| This week's sponsor is ABB. |  | Webinar: The IT/OT Integration Imperative
April 23, 2 pm ET/ 11 am PT
Traditionally, IT and OT systems worked as separate entities; however, the smart grid requires a convergence of both. Join FierceEnergy and a panel of experts as they examine the effects on utilities that do not take steps to converge/integration their IT/OT systems. Register Today. |
Editor's Corner: Utilities see value in deploying smart grid tech Also Noted: Spotlight On... Zigbee gaining momentum
Billions of connections, trillions in value and much more... Smart Water Grid Outlook
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Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) will pay $390,000 to settle a regulatory investigation into its 2012 smart meter "spying" scandal.
The agreement with the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) was reached earlier this month. CPUC had been investigating the actions of former PG&E employee William Devereaux, who was accused of monitoring anti-smart meter groups online between 2009 and 2010 using fabricated credentials. The CPUC issued an Order Instituting Investigation (OII) in April 2012, and it has only now been resolved. Feature News From Across the Energy Industry:
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Utilities see value in deploying smart grid tech
This month's Smart Grid Index (SGI) results from FierceSmartGrid and Zpryme Research show that overall smart grid sentiment decreased by one percentage point to 71 percent. However, utility sentiment was actually higher than vendor sentiment this month. Forty-six percent of all respondents said they expect smart grid hiring to increase over the next 12 months. Thirty-six percent of the vendors surveyed closed a new deal last month, while 67 percent of utilities expect to submit new smart grid proposals for budget approval over the next year.
The survey revealed some other significant trends: The amount of vendors who indicated they closed a deal in the previous month has decreased for three consecutive months. Over the past six months, overall positive sentiment has been fairly consistent, averaging 70 percent during this time period. Also showing a consistent trend, an average of one out of three executives foresees significant investments in global smart grid technology (6 month average). Clearly, utilities recognize the value and necessity of deploying smart grid technologies, as the majority of utilities (an average of 70 percent over the past six months) have consistently revealed that they are submitting new smart grid proposals. Over the next three months, it will be important to monitor broad economic indicators in North American and Europe. More positive economic news could spur new rounds of long-term capital expenditures on smart grid technologies in these markets. Emerging environmental and clean technology legislation in the U.S. is another key item to watch. Such legislation in the U.S. is likely to trigger parallel polices in Europe and Asia. We are currently at the six-month mark of the survey and are able to identify relevant industry trends. That said, with every month of data, we gain more and more insight into the overall trajectory of the smart grid industry as a whole. For example, since much of the global smart grid stimulus funds have dried up, vendors are likely to see longer sales cycles compared to one or two years ago. Additionally, utilities are likely to find it harder to gain approval for large-scale deployments. We will aim to answer these questions over the next three to six months. Hiring activity will also be another key trend to watch, especially as the industry continues to consolidate. As we move forward, we will aim to improve the survey to identify investment areas (analytics, distribution automation, etc.) and markets (North America, Asia, etc.) that are driving overall growth in the smart grid industry. -- Barb Read more about: Smart Grid, Zpryme
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Today's Top News 1. Smart grid market experiencing range of IT innovation
Gartner research has identified several smart grid trends affecting global energy and utility markets in 2013, as the industry faces significant challenges from ongoing environmental concerns, changing policymaker attitudes, and consumer expectations. "Searching for successful business models that will address these issues and generate anticipated shareholder returns in uncertain regulatory settings is a top priority for this industry," said report author Kristian Steenstrup, vice president and Gartner Fellow. "This is in addition to protecting the security of critical generation and delivery infrastructure, as well as maintaining system reliability with aging physical assets. Public and private utilities are looking at how technology can reduce cost, drive efficiencies and enhance competitive advantage." According to Steenstrup, what was once considered a conservative and slow-moving industry has seen a wide range of innovation from within and outside the traditional IT organization. Among the trends: - Smart grid development will increase data quantity by several orders of magnitude, driven by a host of edge devices, as well as new IT and OT applications such as advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), synchrophasors, smart appliances, microgrids, advanced distribution management, remote asset monitoring, event avoidance and self-healing networks. In addition to significantly impacting data volume, smart grid initiatives will produce a different variety of data, such as temporal, spatial, transactional, streaming, structured and unstructured.
- Although the utility industry trails other sectors in cloud adoption due to security and reliability concerns, solutions are beginning to emerge in areas such as smart meter, big data analytics, demand response coordination and GIS. Early implementers of utility cloud and SaaS include investor owned utilities conducting short-term smart grid pilots interested in quick time-to-market, with minimal impact on production systems.
- AMI constitutes a cornerstone of the smart grid by providing a communication backbone for low-latency data aimed at improving distribution asset utilization failure detection, and facilitating consumer inclusion in energy markets. Different market structures, regulatory drivers and benefit expectations create different ownership models for components of the AMI technology stack, which favor different technology solutions across the globe.
- The distributed nature of utility assets, combined with the need for more efficient asset management and labor use, makes mobility and supporting communication technologies high investment priority areas for utilities. The smart grid drive toward better observation of the distribution network requires machine-to-machine (M2M) monitoring systems that are similar in function to low-bandwidth SCADA, but use different communication technologies and approaches (such as personal-area networks, substation, control centers and enterprise LANs, and shared wide-area networks).
For more:
- see this article Related Article:
California utilities rank IT/OT needs Read more about: IT/OT, Gartner Research
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2. EV infrastructure business booming
To realize the economic and environmental benefits of electrified transportation, national and local governments across the globe are backing deployments of plug-in electric vehicle (PEV) charging stations in an effort to increase consumer interest in PEVs. Over the last two years, growing sales of PEVs have fueled a burst of activity in electric vehicle supply equipment (EVSE) infrastructure development. According to Navigant Research, there are currently 48,705 public charging stations around the world. Public networks of charging stations for electric vehicles are made up of those operated by manufacturers, utilities, and third-party service providers. "Numerous companies offering various technologies and business models have emerged to take advantage of the large public investments in this emerging industry," said Lisa Jerram, senior research analyst, Navigant Research. "There has also been enormous private investment in EV infrastructure as these companies respond to and anticipate growing demand. As the market for PEVs grows, and government support for charging infrastructure tapers off, the EVSE industry will become more dependent on private investment to expand." For example, ChargePoint and the City of Sacramento have installed more than 100 EV charging stations with funds from an American Recovery and Reinvestment Act grant through the Transportation Electrification Initiative administered by the Department of Energy and the California Energy Commission. This project has served to accelerate the development and production of electric vehicles to substantially reduce petroleum consumption, reduce greenhouse gas production, and create jobs. There are more than 500 electric vehicles registered in Sacramento including the Nissan LEAF, Chevrolet Volt, Prius Plug-in and Ford Focus Electric with public EV charging stations popping up nationwide at locations like Walgreens, shopping centers, grocery stores and various employer locations. "Early in 2010, before any mainstream plug-in electric vehicle had been introduced, both the Department of Energy and the California Energy Commission allocated funding for public electric vehicle charging infrastructure," said Pat Romano, president and CEO of ChargePoint. "The investment provided thousands of public Level 2 EV charging stations throughout the United States, thousands of charging stations in California, and more than 100 in Sacramento." For more:
- see this article Related Article:
Electric vehicle charging drives forward in California Read more about: Electric Vehicles, EV infrastructure
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3. San Diego Gas and Electric ahead of smart grid pack again
San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) is again in the spotlight for its momentum in developing a smart grid for the benefit of the region. SDG&E has received the "Top Ten Best North American Utilities" award for smart grid development from Greentech Media. Recently, SDG&E was also one of four utilities highlighted for successful smart grid customer engagement efforts by the Smart Grid Consumer Collaborative and has received several other smart grid awards, including "Most Intelligent Utility" from Intelligent Utility magazine, and POWER magazine's "2012 Smart Grid Award" for the nation's most advanced smart grid. SDG&E was recognized by Greentech Media for its ambitious smart grid deployment plans which consist of more than 60 separate initiatives. According to Greentech Media, SDG&E "have been visionaries" in developing its smart grid in which some of the initiatives have already begun producing concrete results. For example, SDG&E has installed 2.3 million smart electric meters and gas meter upgrades; enhanced reliability by adopting an advanced Outage Management System that leverages real-time data from smart meters to speed up the detection and restoration of power outages; and is operating the nation's largest "microgrid" in Borrego Springs which integrates a variety of smart technology on the local system. "These recognitions demonstrate SDG&E's commitment to using the transformative power of the smart grid for the benefit of our customers, our community and the environment alike," said Jim Avery, SDG&E's senior vice president for power supply. "SDG&E is creating a new smarter, greener grid that will improve the lives of customers, enhance energy efficiency efforts, integrate intermittent renewable energy and bolster grid reliability." This is the second year in a row that SDG&E has received the "Top Ten" award. For more:
- see this article Related Articles:
SDG&E tops "Most Intelligent Utilities" list
Who are the nation's renewable energy leaders?
SDG&E takes smart grid honors
San Diego Gas and Electric nets Supply Chain Leadership award Read more about: San Diego Gas & Electric, smart grid award
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4. Blurring the lines between batteries and supercapacitors
Researchers at UCLA have synthesized a material that shows high capability for both the rapid storage and release of energy – a big step toward improving the power delivery of electrical grids. A synthesized form of niobium oxide -- a compound based on an element used in stainless steel with a great facility for storing energy -- would be used in a supercapacitor, a device that combines the high storage capacity of lithium ion batteries and the rapid energy-delivery ability of common capacitors. The development could lead to extremely rapid charging of devices, ranging in applications from mobile electronics to industrial equipment. "With this work, we are blurring the lines between what is a battery and what is a supercapacitor," said Veronica Augustyn, a graduate student in materials science at UCLA and lead author of the paper. "The discovery takes the disadvantages of capacitors and the disadvantages of batteries and does away with them." For more:
- see this article Read more about: energy storage, supercapacitor
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5. Siemens, Teradata driving bottom-line smart grid value
Siemens and Teradata will be the first to offer utilities end-to-end integration of operational data with smart meter data for analysis on a single platform, according to the companies. Utilities face an increasingly challenging business environment. To remain competitive and dynamic, utilities have to utilize both technological and commercial data generated at ever shorter intervals to optimize their systems. Just collecting and storing data doesn't drive any value to a utility's bottom line or help customers understand their energy consumption. By integrating the data and running the analytics, utilities can apply intelligence to networks and use meter, asset and other data sources to gain operational efficiency, improve service and increase customer satisfaction thereby driving value to both the utility and its customers. Teradata customers such as Southern California Edison and Oklahoma Gas and Electric already manage and analyze large data volumes to deliver the services that keep them at the forefront of the industry. Utilities can quickly assess costs and time needed to restore power if there is a blackout, proactively providing their customers with better information. Queries about transmission losses relative to manufacturer types, geographical locations, and weather conditions will enable better planning of networks and load flows. Maintenance can be performed based on data about actual wear, rather than on a fixed cycle. Through the implementation of geographical data their workforce can be deployed more efficiently. For more:
- see this article Related Articles:
Preparing for the rapidly expanding analytics environment
Utility data analytics driving Soft Grid
Smart grid data analytics technology not the problem for utilities Read more about: Teradata, Smart Grid
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Also Noted SPOTLIGHT ON... Zigbee gaining momentum In the last few years, devices based on ZigBee, the wireless communications technology, have gained significant momentum in the energy sector. The forthcoming version of ZigBee, the Smart Energy Profile 2.0 software, is the first version to be Internet Protocol (IP)-based, allowing ZigBee devices to communicate with non-ZigBee devices, such as those using Wi-Fi or HomePlug. Article Quick news from around the Web: >Mobile app blacklisting is on the rise. Article >Cisco predicts 50 billion connected devices by 2020. Article >The Internet of Everything is predicted to generate $14.4 trillion in value through 2020. Article >MLB vs. NBA on big data. Article > The IT/OT Integration Imperative - April 23, 2 pm ET/ 11 am PT Traditionally, IT and OT systems worked as separate entities; however, the smart grid requires a convergence of both. Join FierceEnergy and a panel of experts as they examine the effects on utilities that do not take steps to converge/integration their IT/OT systems. Register Today.
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