Customer interaction
solar panels. The grid companies are at the core of this development. They depend on the appropriate use of IT to both keep up with and also stay ahead of developments. When the end customer initiates change, both more power and energy are required. As a grid company, you have a mix of local production, charging infrastructure and the customer’s smart-home solutions. The latter solutions try to optimise the customer’s consumption on terms other than what is optimal for a grid company. At the same time, we have a “digital” generation of end customers who have completely different expectations towards automated services than previous ones.
The grid companies are the premise providers for both renewable production, electrification of transport and changed consumption habits. In this regard, digitalisation of the customer process is essential, where the majority of inquiries should be possible to answer automatically.
Real-time grid operation
In order to isolate faults faster and predict upcoming faults, information needs to be compiled. This applies, for example, to information from surge protection, local control, RTUs, AMS meters, substation monitoring with local weather conditions, information from end customers, social media and historical drone photos with condition analysis. This will allow parts of the grid to be rapidly brought online, and troubleshooting can be faster.
Data can also be used to continuously update grid models. For example, this gives the operations centre much more accurate information about the grid at all times.
In order to realise the two examples above, there are some important assumptions that should be in order:
- One is making data accessible. A lot of time is spent developing special integrations between the various suppliers’ applications. Flexible integration solutions, standardisation of interfaces and, not least, common data models for core data are important for the innovation circle. Making data accessible fuels innovation. This applies not only to collected data, but equally to deriving data from various applications. We can see that this is an obstacle to development in the industry.
- Another basic prerequisite is IT budgets. This refers to both the size of the IT budgets and the proper use of the IT budgets. Budget increases are rarely popular. But for grid companies, there are few other possibilities to face the future without increasing the size of IT budgets compared to what they currently spend on “bricks and mortar”. This must be supported in the boardroom and operationalised in good budgets that provide incentives for the right investments in the grid companies. Within these budgets, the grid companies must also implement IT security and compliance that corresponds to the role they have as operators of critical infrastructure.
Government regulation of the industry
The final thing I want to mention is government regulation of the industry. The grid companies are highly regulated since they are natural monopolies, and the regulatory regime is very complex. However, given the challenges that the industry faces both on the production and consumption side, the regulator should consider whether, for example, the grid companies should be given extended opportunities to provide active services to their customers that can benefit the grid companies, the end customers and society.