Four reasons why the time for digital Low Voltage networks has come

We are living unraveled changes in the energy sector, which provide many challenges, but also untapped opportunities.

During the last decades, Distribution System Operators (DSOs) have focused on digitalising the Primary Substations. Today, many of the advanced DSOs have also digitalised to a relevant degree their MV network and Secondary Substations.

Now the time has come to digitalise the LV network.

There are 4 main reasons why the dynamics of the LV grids are changing.

1. We are seeing an increasing amount of renewable integration. Especially the integration of solar roof-top and other types of distributed generation happens at LV level. In our Italian grid, for example, the vast majority of the over 700,000 distributed generators are connected at LV level. Energy flows are now bi-directional with completely changed dynamics. 

2. Electrification: a shift from other energy sources to electricity is starting to happen. Domestic users and small businesses are relying on heat pumps, customers migrate from gas towards induction cooking, etc. This increase of energy, but even more relevant, this increase in load peaks, are creating challenges in some areas of the LV grid. On top of that, the electrification of transport in general and electric mobility in particular is starting to take off. Most of the electric cars will use charging at LV level. Some statistics say that in China alone, over 250 million people use some form of 100% electric mobility to commute to work. If the moments of charging mainly slow-charging are well spread out, the energy and load peaks might not be critical, but that cannot be guaranteed without affecting the user experience, so congestion in some portions of the grid needs to be managed.

3.   Offers of storage solutions to small businesses and at domestic level start to become economically attractive in some markets. Storage beyond the meter changes the pattern of consumption and the pattern of energy ingress, while untapped opportunities, both for the customer as well as for the electrical system, in terms of supporting flexibility, demand energy and grid quality. These opportunities however can only be fully harvested when there is a real-time management of the storage.

4. The citizens are becoming digital and might play a much more active role in the future energy system, potentially connecting to an Internet of Energy platform, where they can optimize consumption, share and offer excess energy to other users or operators. Already today enabling dynamic pricing in an electricity market is one of the possible options to create value to the customers by synchronizing the energy value chain all the way from the wholesale market down to the consumption of an individual customer, including the domestic segment. In some countries, for example in Spain, this is already a reality for domestic energy users. However, the practice is showing that especially in combination with apps and automatized solutions that optimize the consumption according to the hourly energy prices in a synchronized way important load peaks can occur, which need to be monitored and managed in real-time.

All of these 4 trends lead to a necessary further digitalisation of the LV portion of the grids. 

At Enel Global Infrastructure and Networks, we are continuously developing and deploying innovative technological solutions to manage our LV networks. 

Just some examples of technologies we focus on:

We operate almost 45 million smart meters in our grids, which serves us not only as a measurement device for the energy to be sent to the retailers for billing, but also as a sensor at the grid edge. For example the new generation smart meters we roll-out in Italy also send to our LV SCADA systems real-time alarms and events with information about the electrical parameters at the grid edge. On the other hand, they enable an interface to the home so that home-automation and other devices beyond the meter can manage and optimize the electricity pattern for the users.

In addition to smart metering, which happens at the grid edge, in Italy we have almost completed the roll-out of our LV SCADA and Distribution Management solution, which is fully interfaced with the LV GIS and MV SCADA solutions in order to monitor and control the LV grid in real time in an integrated manner.

We have developed and industrialized LV RTUs and circuit breakers that we use to remotely manage tens of thousands of LV sections of our secondary substations, and are even field-testing solutions for remotely controlling the LV grid at street cabinet level.

On top of this, we start integrating Edge Computing at our secondary substations and IoT-based sensors at secondary substation and LV lines for optimized operation as well as predicted maintenance.

As you can see, we are getting ready. The time for LV Grid digitalisation is now !