Digitalization of Energy in the IoT era

Digitalization of Energy in the IoT era

The Internet of Things (IoT) represents the potential of a whole new world, where everything is more efficient, measurable, controllable. The insights harvested as data by new Internet-connected devices can be used to enhance efficiency, real-time decision making, solution of critical problems, and eventually create new and innovative experiences. Nevertheless, as more and more devices interconnect, companies are facing increased fragmentation and new challenges and in order to harvest and use the power of data they need solutions to deliver interoperable, end-to-end collaboration that bridges the intersections between the Internet and devices, while riding the waves of innovation coming.

This sparked a wave of older companies (like Microsoft, IBM, Intel etc) and many younger ones (Palantir, Tesla etc.) to find solutions for the above mentioned challenged and turn them into offerings for companies that are willing to harvest the opportunities spawning from IoT. They are developing IoT products and solutions (intelligent gateways, electronic platforms to integrate data etc) to provide fundamental building blocks that streamline integration, lower development costs, and accelerate time to market. Afterall, it all boils down to better and faster decision making. From the device to the data center, these solutions will include capabilities that support a wide range of vertical integration markets, like industrial control within the energy sector where devices operate in domains with extreme safety requirements.

For energy companies, this might lead to better and wider option phase to accommodate new energy sources, better efficiency of assets, greater reliability, upgraded security and unlocking of new business models and services. While urbanization rises and business models demand greater efficiency, energy companies need to augment capacity while developing new solutions, optimizing management of the existing assets. When it comes to how we manage the delivery and use of energy and water, or how we run our cities, there’s definitely immense space for improvement. Ongoing privatization and involvement of shareholders, stakeholders and regulators have transformed the market into a space of intense competition and struggle for more efficiency. This ever-growing scrutiny from investors, regulators and customers regarding social responsibility and sustainability have placed considerable pressure on utility providers. Naturally, there is also pressure on CAPEX side to renew or totally replace aged energy grids and older power plants removing bottlenecks in both distribution and generation of energy. On top of that, with the EV leaders transforming transportation, there is a roaring need for charging networks which will burden the grids. Tesla is already expanding their already existing network of supercharges globally. The introduction of smart cities , smart grids and new methods of generating and transporting energy are now being shaped by the IoT. It enables smart utility services that can be monitored and managed aiming at sustainability.

The transformation of electric grids into smart grids built on digital and IoT solutions will be a matter of life or death for utility companies and energy providers in the years to come. Smart grids could offer proven solutions to the above-mentioned challenges, but the transition is not easy. It will require extensive assessment of available digital technologies and hardware to find the right combination of security, manageability, reliability, and flexibility. The IoT energy movement is about integrating connectivity into equipment and devices, connecting those devices to intelligent networks, and using data analytics to extract meaningful and actionable insights from them. An indicative example will be that of energy generation companies embedding IoT sensors into wind turbine vanes to control their velocity, rotation, and functionality responding in real time to varying wind conditions. The greatest value of smart grid and IoT solutions is that they help realize the potential of data that exists and harvest it to produce automation, better decision making and ultimately increased efficiency. Some more specific solutions are:

• Reduction of capital expenditure (CAPEX)
• Management of demand
• Increased renewable capacity
• Lower maintenance costs.
• Improved regulatory compliance.
• Enhanced customer engagement.

As discussed above, some of the major players in the IT sector are already moving fast and furiously to transform IoT into business offering for the energy sector. One of the most prominent for holistic IoT and tech integrated solutions is Microsoft, a giant among technology companies. As part of the announcement that Microsoft will be carbon negative by 2030, they have identified that the use of energy will be catalytic for human prosperity. Having dedicated more than a billion dollars they have dedicated critical teams to work on how to accelerate the development of carbon reduction and improve removal technologies. The Azure IoT team continues working on tools enabling delivery of new solutions and empowering clients to adopt digitalization. Microsoft’s partnership with Vattenfall, one of Europe’s largest producers and retailers of electricity and heat, illustrates how they can power new Swedish datacenter locations with renewable energy. In their own words, on their website, Microsoft teams outline some of the services in their IoT energy portfolio:

Grid asset maintenance

Visualize your grid’s topology, gather data from grid assets, and define rules to trigger alerts. Then use these insights to predict maintenance and provide more safety oversight. Prevent failures and avoid critical downtime by monitoring the performance and condition of your equipment.

Energy optimization and load balancing

Balance energy supply and demand to alleviate pressure on the grid and prevent serious power outages. Avoid costly infrastructure upgrades and gain flexibility by using distributed energy resources to drive energy optimization.

E-mobility

Remotely maintain and service electric vehicle (EV) charging points that support various charging speeds and vehicle types. Make it easier to own and operate electric vehicles by incentivizing ownership and creating new visibility into energy usage.

Emissions monitoring

Monitor emissions in near real-time and make your emissions data more readily available. Work towards sustainability targets and clean energy adoption by enabling greenhouse gas and carbon accounting and reporting.”

To transition into an IoT environment, data harvesting is essential. One of the upcoming leaders for the utilization of AI and Dara is Palantir. Palantir Technologies is a public American software company specializing in big data analytics. Their original clients were US federal agencies (from CIA to NSA and from DoD to DoE) but they have lately expanded their targeted client base to serve agencies of other countries as well as private companies in the financial and healthcare and energy sectors. Their added value is the multilayered software that takes available data in their platforms and produces visual integrated networks with decision nods, enhancing the user’s capacity for effective decision making. Their most prominent platform for private companies is Foundry and according to Palantir it “integrates and transforms petabyte-scale data, from sensors and IoT to third-party sources and internal datasets. The platform maintains complete data lineage and enforces granular access controls to ensure data integrity and security. Once data is integrated, Foundry unlocks actions, simulations, and analysis that connect users across the enterprise.”

A surprising very strong player in data and continuous optimization is also Tesla. They have a dedicated energy segment, focusing on solar panels for homes, among other services. Their vision remains to accelerate transition into a world without fossil fuels and their plans remains the transformation of energy grids from the ground up. Their solar panels and solar roofs segment offer the customer to reduce their dependence on the grid; to buy solar energy at the lowest price and have total control of electricity input/output. Through the solar roofs, along with Tesla Powerwalls (another Tesla energy product), the Tesla cars and eventually the Tesla software the company offers a wholistic approach on how to control their energy print ad potentially redefine their relationship with the grid (through selling harvested solar power back).

Tesla's Virtual Power Plants (VPP) idea is an excellent example of information of Energy, IT and IoT elements coming together. Distributed computing and IoT helped Tesla ensure grid resilience and address some of the major engineering problems Tesla engineers faced. Talking about reimagining how a smarter grid would look like, and how to get there, two prominent Tesla engineers, Colin Breck and Percy Link, shared their ideas at a recent conference. Their approach involves building immense resiliency through open-source technologies. One of the biggest challenges is about renewable energy sources being integrated which complicates the calculation of supply and demand. A degree of control is lost, and generation becomes more difficult to forecast as you cannot just rely on weather forecasts (for wind or solar). The answer could be better battery technology, a filed where also Tesla is a groundbreaking leader. In those cases where wind and solar power is already common, batteries mitigate these challenges. They can store energy efficiently and release it afterwards, covering extra demand. The ideas of Breck and Lick might sound crazy and involve creating giant batteries the size of whole factories and plants but they also suggested the utilization of smaller home-installed typically used in service of private solar generation or backup power. This is more connected with the bigger Tesla idea of smarted grids. This could revolutionize and maybe displace actual energy generating plants, through the VPPs. The whole idea relies on distributed energy sources (batteries) would be one example combined with wind and solar energy generators. The advantages of such a decentralized network, connected through software and enhanced though advanced analytics, would be immense with primary elements being cost effectiveness and flexibility. In Tesla's VPP vision, digital twin models represent various Internet of Things (IoT) elements. The digital twin modeling software is based on two essential open-source projects: Kubernetes and Akka. Breck clarified that the combination of Akka and Kubernetes is essential as the first can handle more major failures the second can handle minor (or in need of fine-approach). For example, when a system operator would be concerned about modeling an individual site, Akka would scale this diagnostic probe to thousands of sites. He continued by pinpointing the main challenging point of IoT adoption and talked about the intrinsic uncertainty of any IoT system as something that must be accepted and finally embraced.

We definitely live through interesting times and it seems that the future is much closer than it looked before, mainly thanks to companies dedicating much effort to innovate and crate breakthroughs. There is a saying about modern problems needing modern solutions but this does not necessarily apply in this case. We have an old problem and solutions coming from the future; we just hope that they will soon collide and provide the best possible outcome for the planet and Humanity as a whole.?