Energy digitalisation - what does it mean to organisations and home owners?

This article has been inspired by Marxine Waite, Founder at Green Catalyst Consultancy Kenya.

The energy digitalisation has in my mind exploded in recent years and has followed the general trends of current technologies like the smart phone. Should it however, be a follower or should it be a leader within our industry? My main concerns are that we still have developing countries without energy and a vast variation as to how energy is procured, managed and deployed. During current conversations I was actually shocked at how energy is traded in the US regarding solar and the variations we have here in the UK.

Although energy digitalisation is in my eyes going to become the next era, similar to that of the industrial revolution, we really need to work on the weak spots, focusing on the areas that provide the backbone to our industry. One key area for me is billing and over the lockdown period, I have been hearing some shocking stories regarding incorrect billing, estimation and sadly errors. I actually found an error on a bill that would have impacted the organisation by about ￡50,000, luckily we were reviewing their bills. After challenging the supplier we are still in negotiations to put it right. Their systems cannot cope and we are having to wait for a director to agree the billing before we receive it. What is shocking is that none of the meters are automated and we have to provide a meter reading.

I have a similar problem at home where I have changed my supplier (to ensure I am on the correct tariff), only to be told that my SMART meter is not compatible with their system. My meter is in a difficult position to read and it is not always easy to send the required data. Digitalisation has and will have an impact throughout the entire energy chain, from generation to transport, distribution, supply and consumption. Although we are seeing different enhancements in certain areas we are not seeing consistency and we are not seeing all areas moving together in one movement.

If digitalisation within the energy industry is to have any chance of success we need all the parts of the chain to interlink and become ‘one’. If this doesn’t happen we will end up in one very large digital mess with non conformity and incompatibility. All the links need serious enhancements, upgrades and they need to be reset. Currently the chain works well but by the time we are delivering the ‘bill’ to the door it becomes far too complex.

To really get a hold of digitalisation we need to create ‘standards’ and introduce better forums for these links. In addition, it would be prudent if we had a global body that could take these standards and develop a compliance process. The problems I hear in the UK are the same problems I hear across the world.

There is so much complexity within the industry therefore digitalisation will create clarity and solve many issues. The energy expert will just need to take the billing and make sure there are no errors. My team regularly focus on this regarding, Review, Realign, Reduce and Report. The main areas of focus and the common errors are, the rate, estimated billing and contracts, or in our world the ‘REC’.

If we can maximise digitalisation to not only fix billing issues and remove all complexities, this will allow energy management to become more focused and straight forward, enabling organisations to focus on their consumption therefore driving down energy. We all know that reducing energy increases profits and we also know that increasing profits will mean we are being paid to make the planet a better place.

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? Paul Webb, 2021