Tech Talk | The digital utility of the future

Stakeholders presented in a panel at Enlit Europe 2024 some of the innovations that energy sector companies are working on the path towards the utility of the future.

Opening the session, chairperson Gaia Gallotti, research director and head of IDC Energy Insights Europe, set the scene by highlighting the accomplishments of utilities in the energy transition in the last decade or so. For example, improvement in the power mix with a decreased carbon intensity of generation by a third, the scale-up in decarbonisation and electrification with e.g. heat pump sales in Europe having increased by more than four times, and the e-mobility revolution, which though slow to start is now picking up pace.

Then looking ahead she added that while there are going to be many challenges in the next decade, they also offer many opportunities, not only for utilities but for the entire ecosystem of partners that support them.

“We firmly believe that utilities and the utility industry are in the driver’s seat of the energy transition and what they have done thus far and the capabilities they have developed will unleash the energy transition for the commercial and residential markets. And it will be up to them to support these other fundamental players in reaching their own net zero goals so that we can get to where we need to be by 2030 and beyond.”

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Enel – drive toward flexibility

Opening the discussion about innovations in the sector, the utility panel representative Nicola Rossi, Head of Innovation – Enel Grids and Innovability, commented how the transformation of the energy system is happening in parallel with other transformations such as geopolitical, environmental and technology transformations, all of which are impacting the utility business.

As an example, he mentioned climate change as both a driver of the energy transition but also as an impacter on utility assets, with “events that in the past happened perhaps once every 10 years, today happen many times in the same year” and making emergency management key.

In terms of technology, Rossi mentioned three key areas where Enel is innovating – on flexibility, through the integration of storage to power generation assets, the grid with the introduction of digital technologies and power electronics and on the customer side to electrify domestic and commercial consumption.

“We can make more flexible assets, like hydro or geothermal, that are mature but need will need to work in a different way in the future.”

He also cited as an example the use of thermal energy and thermal storage.

“One project we are doing is testing a new thermal storage technology, together with an Italian partner, for a client in the food production area and it’s a real example of a new technology that can answer a need of the industry and support its decarbonisation as well as potentially in the future represent an opportunity to differentiate our offer towards our customers to enlarge our customer base.”

IFS – on the gas trail

Turning to a service provider to utilities, Carol Johnston, VP Energy, Utilities & Resources at IFS, focussed on gas as “the other side of the electrification equation”.

Commenting that natural gas is going to be part of the energy equation into the future, she said that companies are under a lot of pressure to decarbonise across their businesses, of which one aspect is their daily operations and electrification of their vehicle fleets.

Two projects she highlighted are Fortis BC’s 30×30 to reduce carbon emissions by 30% by 2030, in which investment is being put into renewable natural gas as part of their service equation, and Southern California Gas’s investment in green hydrogen and blending it into the natural gas network.

“The approaches are slightly different but it’s really important for natural gas companies to show they are doing something to reduce their impact on the environment.”

In the case of the 30×30 initiative in British Columbia, biogas capture is being undertaken from the dairy farms in the region as well as from landfills and wastewater, which is fed into the network and all customers are able to choose how ‘green’ their supply is, from the minimum 1% up to 100%.

In the SoCalGas project, which is at pilot stage but is planned to be quickly scaled up, solar is being used to produce green hydrogen and then blended at a level of 2-3% for supply to a hydrogen concept home.

“There they are reducing their carbon with the existing infrastructure.”

Vendor perspectives

Opening up discission on innovation by vendors, Ifigeneia Stefanidou, Head of Global Product Management – Flexibility & Analytics at Landis & Gyr, said the company is focussed on offering “optimal edge to enterprise concepts” to leverage data at the edge in the most efficient way but also taking into account security, robustness, reliability and performance.

Such data can be either raw or processed data or simply an alarm for further action.

Stefanidou cited two example projects: the availability of power quality data and the leveraging of AMI to control behind-the-meter resources including heat pumps, water boilers, EV charging stations and PV panels.

“Utilities can manage the load in the networks and even avoid large grid projects by interacting with customers using the existing AMI infrastructure.”

Philippe Beauchamp, Director of Utility Solutions at Eaton, said the bottlenecks needing to be overcome in the energy sector need a pace of innovation that doesn’t match the pace at which the problem is being faced by the utilities, also highlighted the importance of a focus on the edge.

“We have realised we can’t iterate our portfolio of solutions incrementally as we have done traditionally and have introduced a market-driven innovation solutions team for a faster-paced period to focus on the pain points that need to be addressed urgently.”

With this, he mentioned a utility in the EMEA region that had invested in AMI and distribution management system but their frequency and duration of outage indices were not improving and which was attributed to a lack of visibility at the secondary substation level.

“We determined to develop a platform across all our capabilities – distribution planning, distribution automation, substation automation, sensors, volt-var control, etc. – that would deal with the data where it’s generated in order to create more situational awareness.”

This was then a key first step to unlock other potential applications to improve reliability and resilience and help, as a non-wires alternative, to optimise the existing grid.

Fabio Ciccone, Head of Totally Integrated Power at Siemens, highlighted alignment to EU legislation on energy and digitalisation as a key for his company.

As an example, he cited delivery of the first SF6 free switchgear in Italy for a DSO with its elimination in new products due for DSOs by 2026 and TSOs by 2030

As part of this new portfolio, digitalisation also is being implemented with embedded sensors for data for monitoring and managing these assets.

Underlying these is Siemens’s capability level, he adds: “This means that all materials used in the portfolio for these assets are 100% recyclable. We want to be sustainable for the customer but also we want to put on the market sustainable assets.”

Water sector innovation

Last but not least, Henrik Jensen, Senior Vice President at Kamstrup, gave a perspective on the water sector, saying that now in southern Europe almost one-third of the population faces permanent water stress and 2030 projections suggest that by then demand will exceed supply by 40%.

In addition, water losses are a major issue around the world, he said, going on to mention a small city in Tennessee with 4,500 customers with over 50% losses from its production of 1.5 billion l per year.

“It was a massive resource issue to track the leaks so we installed smart meters with acoustic leak detection to give transparency on the network to identify where there were problems so they could then go out and locate them precisely.”

Within the first three months, the losses were reduced to 38%, he added – and “that’s how we see the whole resource and conservation issues.”

How are you bringing innovation into the utility sector?

Jonathan Spencer Jones

Specialist writer
Smart Energy International

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