What’s on the European DSOs’ technology radar?

Smart meters and dedicated metering devices are set to be ‘transformational’ in the coming years in terms of their impact on DSOs, E.DSO’s updated ‘Technology Radar’ reveals.

The ‘Technology Radar’, produced by high-level experts from a large set of European DSOs, is aimed to assess emerging technologies in terms of their impacts on DSOs over the coming decade.

While the majority of the technologies and their impacts on DSOs remain unchanged from their status assessed in the first edition of the ‘Technology Radar’ some nine months ago, the newly released second edition reveals several changes and ups the number of technologies to 33 from the previous 30.

Among these is the removal of ‘cloud computing’, which was previously assessed as having high impact in the short term, up to 2025, but is no longer detailed.

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Thus the highest impacts within this period are expected to come from drones and AI.

Another removal from the technology list is ‘automated solutions for customer interactions’, i.e. apps, chatbots, etc., which was assessed as having medium to low impact up to 2025.

However, an addition in terms of impact within this period is smart distribution transformers.

Other new additions are set for impacts in the medium term, in the period from 2025 to 2030, with these including smart metering and dedicated metering devices assessed as set to be ‘transformational’, ‘inverter-to-grid’ as ‘high’ and ‘building-to-grid’ as ‘medium’.

With this, the most significant technologies with ‘transformational’ impact by 2030 also include edge computing, local energy optimisation and sector integration, LV self-healing, quantum computing and the Internet of Things.

The other high impact technologies within this period include new storage technologies, digital twins, vehicle-to-grid and generative AI, while those of high to medium impact are hydrogen, solid state batteries and microgrids.

Long term, by 2035, the technologies expected to be impactful are low inertia networks assessed to be high to transformational, innovative emobility charging to be medium and DC networks and semiconductors to be medium to low.

The lowest impacts are expected to come from advanced comms and virtual and augmented reality in the short term and data corridors that support biodiversity and 3D printers in the medium term.

Alongside the technology assessment, the intent of the ‘Technology radar’ is to increase awareness of the opportunities and threats associated with the technologies.

To this end the project promoters also record new accompanying factsheets on ‘SF6-free Equipment’, ‘Building-to-Grid technologies’ and ‘Low Voltage Self-Healing’ as well as updates to those on ‘Artificial Intelligence’, ‘Generative AI’, ‘Drones’ and ‘Edge Computing’ featuring promising use cases and projects that are testing and validating the application of these technologies.

The Technology Radar was the work of a dedicated task force organised within the E.DSO Technology & Knowledge Sharing Committee co-convened by Pierre Mallet, director of R&D and Innovation, and Anne-Laure Popelin, R&D and Innovation Strategy lead, at Enedis.