Smart Grid – technologies for the future

Asset owners and operators face a complex range of challenges that are driving the need for transformational change. Grid operators’ assets are increasingly a mix of the new and the old, requiring multifaceted approaches to operate, monitor and maintain.
 
Meeting increasingly tough regulatory and security requirements, while maintaining the investment required to keep pace with vital digital transformation programs, is adding further pressure on asset managers and budgets.
 
Capgemini’s Advanced Asset Lifecycle Management approach embraces the end-to-end value chain, from project development, procurement and construction, commissioning, operation and maintenance, through to sustainable decommissioning and recycling.
 
It deploys a comprehensive portfolio of services and interventions, with data analytics, IoT and AI optimizing the lifecycle of assets, improving reliability, reducing maintenance costs and often extending the productive life of the asset, delaying replacement costs and upheaval.

Maintaining the energy balance in today’s electricity grid 24/7, 365 days a year requires live, real-time data, analytics and automation to manage and optimize the flow, and to deliver day-to-day operations that are efficient, secure, reliable and predictable.
 
The beating heart of today’s dynamic grid operation is an integrated control centre, embracing IT, OT, automation and advanced analytics, informed by multiple data sources, both internal, down to individual network component level, and external too, such as live weather forecasting and renewable generation performance data.
 
Crucially, the vast amount of data and the AI-driven insights it delivers is rationalized and prioritized, presented using an intuitive human-machine interface and innovative dashboard to enable control centre operators to respond with skills and speed in real time to events, while also preventing human error.

Smart metering technology has changed the face of the utilities industry, eliminating or reducing manual meter readings, improving interval data capabilities and enabling two-way communication between electricity companies and consumers.
 
While these capabilities were ground-breaking at the time of deployment, many first-generation components now lack the digital and technological maturity needed to adequately address the challenges of today’s business landscape.
 
Capgemini’s Next-Gen AMI helps utilities design and build an integrated system featuring the very latest smart meters for homes and businesses, communications applications and data management technologies. In combination they drive value for utilities and their stakeholders by enabling innovative new services, and unlocking enhanced performance, resilience, security and cost efficiencies.

Transformation of the grid begins with the modernisation of substations. Today’s smart substation acts as a conversion hub, facilitating the frictionless exchange of power between and among a wide variety of assets and consumers and prioritizes generation and consumption of clean energy sources.
 
Smart substations “flatten the grid” enabling multi-directional flow to seamlessly manage supply and demand across the grid, including variable loads and large and small generation sources, such as nuclear, steam, solar, wind, EV, batteries and storage systems.
 
They also extend the life of existing assets and equipment by maintaining voltage and frequency within acceptable limits and managing excessive heating of transformers during reverse power flow.
 
Implementing software-defined control systems for utilities enables digitalization of automation, protection and control systems and more intelligent predictive maintenance and edge analytics. These types of control systems help reduce risk of hardware failures and result in improved safety, security, reliability and manageability.

Utilities businesses are experiencing a data tsunami, with huge increases in data sources and volumes, more and more real time data and increasing requirements to keep all data, including historical data, safe, secure and readily accessible. Data is fuelling the evolution of smart grids at scale – but what is the appropriate architecture to capture, store and exploit data contained within today’s grid ecosystems?
 
In today’s smart grids, IoT data is used to optimize CAPEX and investments in Intelligent Grid modernization, while Artificial Intelligence helps to derive value from existing grid data, and reduce OPEX.
 
Data and AI in combination fuel new data-driven business models to enable transition from consumer to prosumer. Data sharing supports collaboration in the ecosystem and adds transparency to ensure regulatory compliance.