By fostering greater collaboration and co-creation within the Energy Industry, it is becoming crucial to consider Ecosystems in design and thinking. Ecosystems designed well are robust for navigating the complex landscape of any Energy transition.

The Energy transition we are all facing has such high levels of complexity and challenge. We are undertaking a radical redesign of our energy systems where renewables based on clean energy, decarbonization or low carbon, new distributed business models and rapidly growing demands for electricity are all compressed into a thirty-year agenda to achieve net zero. Collaboration, cooperation and coordination will be paramount, and this is where Ecosystems and Platform technology will become essential to manage these “multiple” transformations needed.

Here in this post is a structured argument for promoting Business Ecosystem thinking and design for those involved in the Energy System, emphasizing the benefits of sharing IP, knowledge, research, market insights, and general improvement potentials when it comes to considering Ecosystems within the Energy Transitions, where collaborations are growing in importance and need. I outline ten areas of consideration.

There is a significant amount to think through when it comes to setting up and managing within a collaborative Ecosystem, especially in such an industry as the Energy or specific parts of it, be these geographical or sub-sectors (Grids, Hydrogen, Hard-to-Abate, Wind, Solar, Storage, Europe, China etc., etc).

There has been a reasonably protective environment in the Energy sector with limited choices due to the significant investment in assets and infrastructure, long-term financial commitments, managing these over extended times for risk and continuous investment, primarily operating in highly regulated market conditions over many years. The impact of suddenly opening up and understanding the risks and effects this might have on these investments is causing a natural pause in making a radical change, but can we afford this?

The energy transition brings huge uncertainty to all involved in it in areas of technological change, radically different competition and regulatory needs, the management of the different assets being installed, digitalization and community or customer engagement. It is not one way anymore or our way; this transition is very different.

The idea of collaborating across multiple needs will have to determine where and what value this brings to all the parties involved. This is the critical starting point of Ecosystem design. One prime example where collaborations can start to learn together to extend into an Ecosystem in design is the focus on converging technologies and adopting common standards and commonality.

I have recently provided extensive coverage of how Ecosystems often need to be interconnected to achieve a more outstanding design for sustaining and collective prosperity. In the seven-part series on my ecosystem4innovating.com, you can start by reading the summary of this hierarchy of business ecosystem needs. Equally in supporting this series I provided fifteen (I know!) posts on different aspects of Ecosystems to consider on my paul4innovating.com site, one example is breaking down resistence.

The need when considering any Energy Ecosystem thinking and design

1. Holistic Perspective and Transition Planning:
   • Energy transitions involve multifaceted challenges, from technological advancements to policy changes. A business ecosystem approach allows for a holistic understanding of the interconnected elements and their dependencies.
   • Collaborative efforts enable a comprehensive view of the entire value chain, identifying synergies and gaps that individual entities might overlook.
   • The Energy Transition involves diverse components such as renewable energy sources, grid modernization, energy storage, and sustainable technologies. A business ecosystem approach provides for a comprehensive and growing shared understanding of these elements and facilitates integrated planning and exchanges for a seamless transition.

2. Accelerated Innovation in Ecosystems for Sustainable Technologies:
   • Energy industry transitions require rapid innovation to meet sustainability goals and address climate change. Collaborative ecosystems provide a platform for pooling resources, expertise, and technologies.
   • By sharing knowledge and research, participants can collectively accelerate the development and adoption of innovative solutions, reducing duplication of efforts and optimizing resources.
   • Collaboration within the ecosystem can specifically target innovation in renewable energy technologies, energy storage solutions, and smart grid systems. Joint research and development efforts can accelerate the deployment of sustainable technologies crucial for the Energy Transition.

3. Mitigating Risk in Transition Investments:
   • The energy industry is inherently risky, with technological uncertainties, market dynamics, and regulatory changes.
   • By distributing risks across multiple stakeholders, the impact of uncertainties can be minimized, making it more feasible for organizations to invest in transformative projects.
   • Collaborative ecosystems provide a mechanism for risk-sharing, ensuring that the economic burden of uncertainties is distributed among multiple stakeholders, making it more feasible for organizations to invest in transformative projects.

4. Cost Efficiency:
   • Ecosystems promote resource efficiency by avoiding redundant investments in research and development. Shared knowledge and insights can lead to product development and commercialization cost reductions.
   • Coordinated efforts in infrastructure development, such as shared grids or storage facilities, can also lead to cost savings for the entire ecosystem.
   • Sharing insights and data across the Ecosystem provides a diverse range of knowledge and learning to improve efficiencies and seek higher productivity gains.
   • By providing growing insights and expertise encourages fresh investment and capital in understanding the data, benefits and impacts of assessing commercial returns.

5. Collective Influence on Global Energy Policies:
   • The Energy Transition is a global imperative, and collaborative ecosystems provide a unified voice for the industry in engaging with international policymakers. By working together, organizations can contribute to developing global energy policies that support sustainable practices and facilitate the transition on a broader scale.
   • Well-established Ecosystems with a solid leading voice can shape and influence others; recognizing the emerging (best) practices and broader adoption of these approaches will provide growing insights and leading ways to operate in the future.

6. Optimizing Investment in Transition Infrastructure:
   • Shared resources and insights within the ecosystem can help optimize investments in critical infrastructure for the Energy Transition, such as developing shared renewable energy facilities, storage infrastructure, and intelligent grid systems. This collaboration reduces costs and accelerates the deployment of necessary infrastructure.
   • The need is to shape standards for emerging technologies and infrastructure approaches not just on a national but international level for a global scale in emerging proven solutions that meet the multiple agendas of cost, reliability, security, scaling up potential and low carbon.

7. Regulatory Influence, Shared Insights for Regulatory Alignment:
   • Collaborative ecosystems have a stronger collective voice when engaging with policymakers and regulators. This can influence the creation of supportive policies and regulations that foster innovation and sustainable practices.
   • Unified efforts are more likely to shape a favourable regulatory environment for the energy transition, overcoming barriers that individual organizations might face.
   • The regulatory landscape plays a pivotal role in shaping the Energy Transition. Collaborative ecosystems enable industry players to share insights, lobby collectively for supportive policies, and navigate regulatory challenges more effectively, fostering an environment conducive to sustainable energy practices and building stronger Business & Government partnerships.

8. Market Expansion:
   • Ecosystems provide a platform for companies to access new markets and diversify their offerings. Organizations can tap into each other’s customer bases and distribution channels by collaborating.
   • This can lead to increased market penetration for sustainable energy solutions, as well as creating new business models that cater to emerging needs.
   • A focused business ecosystem approach can be leveraged to expand markets specifically for sustainable energy solutions that can leapfrog past stages of necessary investments.
   • Collaboration allows for joint marketing efforts, shared customer bases, and the creation of new business models that cater specifically to the evolving needs of the Energy Transition and the diverse customer and technology needs (on-demand, EV charging, evolving solutions, two-way flows).

9. Stakeholder and Community Trust and Reputation:
   • Open collaboration fosters transparency and builds trust among stakeholders, including customers, investors, and the public. This can enhance the reputation of the entire ecosystem and its diverse participants.
   • A positive reputation is increasingly crucial in attracting investments, partnerships, and customers, especially in industries undergoing significant transitions.
   • Social licence is vital for community engagement and civil voice to have higher inclusion levels in policy framing, implementation, mutual obligation, and association.

10. Building a Long-Term Resilient Energy Ecosystem:
    • The Energy Transition introduces new challenges, including intermittency in renewable energy sources, building resilience and response differently and, for example, the need for advanced energy storage solutions.
    • A collaborative ecosystem builds resilience by fostering joint efforts against external shocks and unforeseen challenges by creating a support network. Entities within the ecosystem can adapt more effectively to emerging challenges, ensuring the sustainability of the energy transition over the long term.

By emphasizing the specific challenges and opportunities inherent in the Energy Transition, any Ecosystem initiative becomes more tailored and compelling by the time invested by the stakeholders, the commitment to being open and ready to exchange knowledge. We need to think about the business case the barriers and issues to overcome, and the broader points of any blueprint of how this evolves, influences and shapes

As one of its objectives, it must showcase how a collaborative ecosystem approach is beneficial and essential for overcoming the unique hurdles posed by the transition to a sustainable energy future and how it “learns”, that collective learning, so as to enable it to work.

In summary, a business ecosystem approach is about sharing resources and creating a collective intelligence that propels the entire Energy industry or sub-sector forward. The energy transition is a shared challenge, and by adopting a collaborative mindset, organizations can amplify their impact, increase resilience, and drive meaningful change.

The post Considering the design of the Energy Ecosystem first appeared on Innovating the Energy Transition.

So many success stories, specifically across different industries, rely on collaborations and co-creations from essential ecosystem design and thinking. This is partly why I focus on the Energy Transition and Industrial Transformation for my innovation and ecosystem work, as the Energy sector’s potential is enormous for working together and scaling emerging solutions. Managing Ecosystems will become essential.

Energy collaborations are occurring but slower than we ideally want to undertake the massive changes needed to switch energy sources, upgrade systems and infrastructure, and provide reliable energy sources from radically different fuel sources where electricity will dominate our consumers’ needs.

Just take one of our more significant Energy challenges and recognize it needs massive collaboration

To quote from IEA, “Electricity is central to the functioning of modern societies and economies – and
its importance is only growing as technologies that run on electricity, such as electric vehicles and heat pumps, become increasingly popular.”

“Power generation is currently the largest source of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in the world, but it is also the sector leading the transition to net zero emissions through the rapid expansion of renewable energy sources such as solar and wind power.”

“Ensuring consumers have secure and affordable access to electricity while also reducing global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions is one of the core challenges of the energy transition” Source IEA Report Electricity 2024.

To get to any successful point of achieving an Energy Transition by 2050, we have to innovate harder, collaborate more and exchange our knowledge and understanding.

Collaborations are occurring but at patchy and slow rates to form and deliver. We need ecosystem thinking and design into a more central solution to accelerate the changes we need within all the different parts of the Energy Transition. My last post highlights some of the areas emerging.

Fostering collaboration and co-creation within the Energy Industry is crucial for navigating the complex landscape of transition. The need to share IP, knowledge, research, market insights, and general improvements that can scale and be (universally) adopted propels the entire industry forward.

We need more success stories or even Ecosystems emerging

These success stories demonstrate ecosystem thinking is pivotal in driving the energy transition and creating positive impacts across industries. Collaborations between stakeholders with diverse expertise are crucial for addressing complex energy challenges and achieving sustainable outcomes.

I do not doubt that ecosystem thinking and design will form an even more prominent part of the energy transition in 2024 and beyond. Collaborations will be at the forefront of thinking to tackle complex challenges and provide solutions that can rapidly scale on platform solutions.

We cannot afford to “go it alone” anymore, we need to pool resources, exchange, collaborate and co-create just simply because the Energy Transition is a massive undertaking needing this shared understanding and drive to scaling the change.

The energy transition is a shared challenge, and by adopting a more open collaborative mindset, the collective group can amplify their impact and positioning, increase resilience and adoption and drive meaningful change.

I am looking to learn of more (ecosystem) collaborations to build out on their understanding, example and learning to work in different ways than as independent entities.

The post Seeking more Energy Transition Ecosystem Success Stories, Please first appeared on Innovating the Energy Transition.

In this second post of a mini-series of three, I want to explain this decentralized community energy concept further: “This radical concept envisions the energy transition as a living, evolving entity that bridges technology and nature, sparking profound shifts in how communities generate, consume, and perceive energy. It challenges established norms and prompts a complete reimagining of our relationship with energy and the environment”.

By introducing the concept of the “Energy Transition Nexus: A Living Energy Organism” and how it challenges the conventional approach to the energy transition:

While the concept described in my first and introductory post, “Envision Energy as a living, evolving community,” is indeed a radical departure from the existing way we see energy delivery and its transition, it takes an essential step in connecting much of the parts of the energy transition, its importance to our living.

I feel it is essential to bridge the gap between the natural world and the business world in a more closely aligned way, going beyond existing frameworks or thinking but still grounding this into business-orientated understanding to relate more.

Let’s explore a business-oriented, yet still disruptive, approach that brings a conceptual leap to the energy transition with this decentralized community proposal while maintaining some degree of continuity with business practices but set in an ecosystem way of thinking and design:

Disruptive Ecosystem-Centric Business Value Proposition for Energy Transition:

Holistic Energy Ecosystem: Integrated Business Network

Imagine transforming the energy transition into a holistic ecosystem of interconnected businesses, each contributing unique value to accelerate sustainable energy adoption. Much is not new, but it works to be more integrated and leveraging off each part:

Key Elements that form a common thread:

1. Ecosystem Synergy: Create a collaborative ecosystem of businesses, including energy producers, tech startups, finance firms, and community organizations. Businesses leverage each other’s strengths to streamline the energy transition process.
2. Integrated Energy Marketplace: Develop a dynamic digital marketplace where businesses trade energy, technologies, and services. This platform fosters innovation, enabling startups to showcase breakthrough solutions and established players to diversify offerings.
3. Impact Investment Funds: Establish impact investment funds that pool resources from corporations, investors, and philanthropists. These funds provide startups with financial support and access to the ecosystem’s resources and mentorship.
4. Ecosystem-Inspired Innovation Hubs: Set up innovation hubs that mimic natural ecosystems. These hubs house labs, co-working spaces, and prototyping facilities, encouraging cross-sector collaboration and creativity for disruptive energy solutions.
5. Collaborative Energy R&D: Facilitate joint research and development efforts between startups and established corporations. This approach speeds up innovation cycles, enabling rapid prototyping and scaling of breakthrough technologies.
6. Ecosystem Tokens for Collaborators: Introduce blockchain-based ecosystem tokens that represent contributions to the ecosystem. Businesses earn tokens for sharing resources, knowledge, and technologies, fostering a culture of collaboration.
7. Ecosystem Impact Dashboards: Provide real-time dashboards that track the ecosystem’s collective impact on emissions reduction, energy efficiency, and community engagement. Transparency enhances accountability and motivates continuous improvement.
8. Eco-Entrepreneurship Fellowships: Launch fellowships for aspiring entrepreneurs to work within the ecosystem. These fellows collaborate with diverse businesses, gaining insights and building ventures that align with sustainable energy goals.
9. Ecosystem-Centred Policy Advocacy: Form a coalition of businesses advocating for favorable energy policies at the community level, the ones that manage and consume the energy. Businesses are established with diverse expertise to support and amplify the community’s collective voice, influencing more central regulations supporting sustainable energy technologies’ growth.
10. Sustainability-Powered Branding: Businesses within the ecosystem emphasize their contributions to sustainability in branding. This appeals to environmentally conscious consumers and strengthens the ecosystem’s overall influence.
11. Ecosystem-Driven Supply Chains: Encourage businesses to prioritize partnerships with ecosystem members throughout their supply chains. This strategy maximizes synergies and drives the adoption of sustainable practices across industries.
12. Ecosystem Experiential Events: Organize experiential events where ecosystem members and the public engage with sustainable energy technologies and solutions. These events foster awareness and excitement, spurring widespread adoption.

The ecosystem-centric model accelerates the transition while aligning with existing business paradigms by creating an integrated business network that shares resources, knowledge, and expertise. It’s a transformation that leverages collaboration, investment, and market dynamics to drive radical change within the energy industry and supports the primary community needs as central.

The aim is to provide a disruptive and business-oriented solution for the energy transition:

Let’s take unconventional thinking to the extreme and propose a radically disruptive concept that challenges the very foundation of the energy transition:

We begin to talk about a different energy game, a new language that reflects a living ecosystem for energy

Energy Transition Nexus: A Living Energy Organism

Radically Disruptive Ecosystem-Centric Energy Transition Concept:

Imagine an energy transition paradigm where communities create a living, self-organizing energy organism called the “Energy Transition Nexus.” This radical concept merges cutting-edge technology, biology, and community engagement to revolutionize the energy transition process:

Key Elements of getting this local engaged and participating across communities that give engagement, employment and drive skill and learning in community ways:

1. Living Energy Grid: Design an interconnected network of biologically inspired energy nodes that generate, store, and distribute energy. These nodes mimic ecosystems, with energy generation fueled by natural processes like photosynthesis and microbial activity. Build an understanding of what this requires to be realized through different disciplines and knowledge.
2. Biodiversity Energy Modules: Develop modular energy systems that mimic diverse ecosystems, using bioengineered organisms to harness solar, wind, and thermal energy. Each module thrives in specific environmental conditions, ensuring year-round energy production.
3. Adaptive Evolution AI: Deploy AI systems that monitor energy production, consumption, and environmental factors. Over time, these AI systems evolve the energy organisms for greater efficiency, resilience, and adaptation to changing conditions.
4. Community-Bio Interaction: Engage community members as “energy stewards.” Each individual’s actions, from recycling to energy conservation, affect the health and performance of the Energy Transition Nexus. Stewards receive tokens that grant them access to community resources.
5. Ecosystem Health Dashboards: Provide real-time visualizations of the Energy Transition Nexus’s health, performance, and environmental impact. These dashboards make energy consumption tangible and foster a sense of responsibility among community members.
6. Energy Biomimicry Art: Collaborate with artists to create living energy art installations that showcase the beauty and potential of the Energy Transition Nexus. These installations inspire and raise awareness about the transformative power of biologically inspired energy. The community, from those in the schoolroom to those in business, society service or entering retirement, all see their energy ecosystem and express this through their contributions and creativity.
7. Decentralized Energy Markets: Enable autonomous energy trading between neighbouring communities through the Energy Transition Nexus. Smart contracts and blockchain technology facilitate secure, peer-to-peer energy transactions. Also, having the interaction with the centralized grid to support a regional and national designed approach
8. Ecosystem-Driven Policy Labs: Form policy labs where community members engage with energy scientists and policymakers to collaborate and exchange to develop adaptive regulations that encourage the growth and evolution of the Energy Transition Nexus that is shared on a broader level in emerging and good practice.
9. Energy Transition Biohackathons: Host biohackathons that invite bioengineers, ecologists, and innovators to co-create novel energy organisms. These organisms continuously push the boundaries of energy generation and storage capabilities in wider communities of communities, set up in a network forming and exchanging way.
10. Ecosystem Impact Tokens: Introduce a token economy that rewards individuals for contributing to the thriving of the Energy Transition Nexus. Tokens can be exchanged for shared energy credits, cultural experiences, or investments in further bioenergy research.
11. Biofeedback Learning Experiences: Offer educational programs where community members can interact with and learn from the energy organisms directly. These experiences cultivate a deeper understanding of ecological principles and sustainable practices.
12. Nature-Inspired Urban Planning: Integrate the Energy Transition Nexus into urban planning, creating green spaces that double as energy hubs. Urban design blends seamlessly with nature, promoting a holistic approach to sustainable living.

This radical concept envisions the energy transition as a living, evolving entity that bridges technology and nature, sparking profound shifts in how communities generate, consume, and perceive energy. It challenges established norms and prompts a complete reimagining of our relationship with energy and the environment.

This disruptive business model empowers local communities to take ownership of the energy transition by forming cooperative ecosystems that promote entrepreneurship, collaboration, and innovation.

This business model shifts the focus from centralized energy production to distributed, community-driven solutions that align with existing business frameworks while encouraging radical change.

Part one, the foundation post, is here

The final part, part three of this mini-series, entitled “Valuing and Perceiving Energy in the Community,” tackles the value proposition and its realism is next.

• Linked and validated through work with ChatGPT

The post A new Energy Transition for a profound community shift first appeared on Innovating the Energy Transition.

Any energy transition is a massive shift in the energy supply.

As our energy consumption continues rising, we face several global challenges. The primary sources of our energy production will need to change as carbon emissions and warming greenhouse gases continue to amass in the planet’s atmosphere, creating a more unstable world we live in today. Traditionally, we have been heavily dependent on mainly three types of fossil fuels in use for energy generation: coal, oil and natural gas are all non-renewable sources, depleting the planet’s resources.

The continued burning of fossil fuels for electricity, heat, and transportation is giving levels of carbon intensity that need to be dramatically reversed as this continues to put pressure on rising temperatures and a warming planet. We have this real need for an effective energy transition built on electricity supplied by renewables. Renewable energy sources offer cleaner alternatives based on solar, wind power, hydroelectric energy, biomass from plants, hydrogen and fuel cells and geothermal power.

We need to build different energy solutions to resolve the current grid difficulties of accommodating variable power sources like wind and solar energy, the fastest-growing renewable power sources. As these resources begin to supply increasing percentages of power to the grid, integrating them into grid operations will become increasingly difficult.

Our present energy grids are partly to blame for their out-of-date design and the reliance on fossil fuels to power them. Most of today’s grids were built early in the last century and work on a central distribution model with minimal flexibility to adapt to alternative energy sources or sudden outages.  We rely on large-scale energy grids designed over many decades of upgrades and simply fixing and patching, and these are not up for the job to deal with the challenges of increased power demand. They are very carbon-intensive.

The energy transition is about reducing carbon emissions. Globally it is recognized electrification from renewable sources becomes central to reducing carbon. Carbon emission reductions are necessary for new transportation solutions and our energy supply needs for industry and cities.

We do have real alternatives through renewables.

Renewables are overcoming many challenges to make them economically viable, taking those surrounding our grid infrastructure.

Firstly, there is a physical reality that the wind, solar, and geothermal resources often are located in remote places or reliant on the sun or weather conditions. This has significant logistical issues in delivering power and minimising the loss of power in transmissions.

Secondly, energy distribution radically needs to change to efficiently distribute the power from renewable to where much of the power demand is, in urban city areas, and this has significant infrastructure issues to resolve to switch from central power generation to distribute and bidirectional sources.

Thirdly, a new strategy for providing storage capacity will be central to this ability to switch to renewables, and this conversion to electricity, we lose central inverters and inertia to keep the power “on” and need to build local storage to accommodate power surges and variable electricity flows.

Fourthly, we must build electric superhighways that provide power infrastructure radically different from the past to meet future demand. As electricity demand rapidly rises, our existing grid infrastructure cannot cope without massive overhauls and different transmission solutions.

Our new energy sources of supply are being designed to be bi-directional, so power utilities, intermediaries, or final consumers can all play their part in managing their role in generating and managing electricity. This two-way energy flow allows for returning to the grid excess capacity, offering very different business models than the past for new pricing models that are increasingly flexible, challenging the past, often monopolistic positions of one energy provider.

The challenge is building a global consensus of understanding for an effective energy transition.

Energy sourcing as they become more decentralized and more open to the competition, where more energy options will rapidly change the market for different competitive models.  Smart Infrastructure, Storage, and Smart Grid solutions are changing the dynamics within the energy supply. Solutions today for energy storage and distribution solutions are being designed to help smooth out the variability in wind and solar resources and progressively phase out fossil fuels as technology solutions will make them easier to use and in cost solutions.

The economic and political will globally is the key to rapid change. The need to rapidly “ramp up” our renewable sources of energy, mainly from solar, wind, hydroelectric, biomass from plants, hydrogen and fuel cells, and geothermal power, is possible so we will be able to make better use of various energy resources to achieve this energy transition that is needed.

We need far greater collaboration and investment in building a new energy infrastructure for the future built on renewables and all their variability. Predictability is not simply on market planning and evaluating potential demand; it needs to be more in real-time, reliant on a constant stream of data streaming into control points to send power to where it is needed on time and every time.

The post Simple facts, time to act, on our energy grids first appeared on Innovating the Energy Transition.

In the past week the Davos World Economic Forum has been on, where thousands gather to listen, explore, make contact and generally gather the mood of the Worlds economic climate over the coming year. The sessions are highly valuable to be selective over but listen into.

Over this weekend, I spent a fair amount of reading time working through the World Economic Forum to remind me of this incredible source of knowledge across many world issues and challenges. I think this is not an event to miss when you cut through all the negatives surrounding Davos and the “elite” and lucky ones are able to rub shoulders and get a better understanding of thinking and give some degrees of new clarity to individual thinking and their strategic direction from grasping the risks, potentials and value opportunities offered when so many leaders can find time to come together and exchange.

These reports (Whitepapers) are a storehouse of knowledge, facts and suggested actions that need to be taken. The Whitepapers found here cover Climate issues, Green Deal views, Resilience, Circular Transformation, Global Value Chains, Electricity views , Securing the Energy Transition and plenty more.

For me, the weekend focus was on the Energy Transition following on from their recent Davos event and the series of reports co-sponsored with different organizations built up over many years.

The Energy Transition had many sessions within the forum where views could be exchanged.

Al Gore, the former Vice president of the United States, is such a leading figure on Energy, Climate, leading many arguments and providing many solutions to saving our planet.

On one of the Davos panels, “Leading the Charge through Earth’s New Normal” Al Gore was brilliant, passionate, and angry but crystal clear on some of the real barriers and impediments of why we are presently failing to make this Energy Transition.

If nothing else, look at the part of his speech that clearly states our crisis. GO HERE

VP Gore also provided a really fast-moving, extremely interesting session outlining the ability to track and trace Methane Gas to individual sites across the Globe. His talk Real Data: Traceability for Greenhouse Gas Emissions went through how this data is aggregated at facility-level precision and discusses the ongoing data paradigm shift for accountability and transparency, highlighting Climate TRACE’s new dataset of 70,000+ individual sites. The reference site, all free to view and download data is https://climatetrace.org/about

Climate TRACE is a global non-profit coalition created to make meaningful climate action faster and easier by independently tracking greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions with unprecedented detail and speed.

They harness satellite imagery and other forms of remote sensing, artificial intelligence, and collective data science expertise to track human-caused GHG emissions with unprecedented detail and speed.

Climate TRACE’s emissions inventory is the world’s first comprehensive accounting of GHG emissions based primarily on direct, independent observation. Our innovative, open, and accessible approach relies on advances in technology to fill critical knowledge gaps for all decision-makers that rely on the patchwork system of self-reporting that serves as the basis for most existing emissions inventories.

From <https://climatetrace.org/about>

We make meaningful climate action faster and easier by harnessing technology to track greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions with unprecedented detail and speed, delivering relevant information to all parties working to achieve net-zero global emissions.

From <https://climatetrace.org/our-story>

The sessions and Whitepapers associated with the World Economic Forum are really recommended to visit and explore.

Just listening to the two I have mentioned here featuring Al Gore was highly valuable for getting motivated to keep attempting to raise awareness and add to the need to raise the Energy Transition.

We are falling so far behind on this need to switch to renewables, away from Fossil fuels that continue to warm at the planet, even more, today than a few years back. We are losing the battle, and we, as humans, let alone thousands of other species, will suffer constant crises and lose our habitat as we know it. It is a scary place coming towards us faster than you can imagine.

The post Raising the Energy levels for the Energy Transition first appeared on Innovating the Energy Transition.

There is a growing, possibly intense focus and awareness that our Energy Grids worldwide are in serious trouble.

The significant changing consumption needs and generation patterns are causing significant concerns that existing ageing infrastructure is becoming a major source of risk to power grid safety, reliability and financial exposure and in failing to deliver power on the expected 24 x 7, we need.

If you look at ten of the top issues that are causing a growing crisis

1. Ageing or outdated infrastructure
2. Supply chain failures are delaying infrastructure equipment changes.
3. A continued public opposition delaying infrastructure options and bureaucratic barriers
4. There is a continued lack of sizable funding to make major changes
5. System redundancies and stranded assets and the issues of legacy write-offs
6. The increased complexity of the grid is still unclear in its final generation mix design
7. Cyber Attacks are continuing and exposing significant weakness
8. Extreme weather events are growing and exposing grid vulnerabilities.
9. Previously poor project management, inconsistencies in capital spending
10. Changing demand needs, the acceleration of electrification and the lack of new infrastructure

The need is to find effective responses and considerations of the options, managing change simultaneously while maintaining increasing power demand.

The energy system is being disrupted, and where there are levels of high disruption, there is always uncertainty, debate and learning to take risker views of the future, creating a lot of unease and hesitation. As quoted by one senior person, “we have an inadequate view of what – positively, and in detail – we’re building towards.

As the sector transforms at such an accelerating rate, the move towards ambitious decarbonization targets has required that clean energy is explored in all those options and required to be pushed to the forefront of future solutions. Integrating that variable green energy onto the grid and hardening infrastructure assets against extreme weather are proving some industry’s most pressing challenges.

Changing the ageing grid infrastructure system needs to be gradual and systematic and cause the least disruption to the power supply. This evolving into a new grid design is no easy task when you are dealing with thousands of transmission points, lines and final consumer points, all that needs to be considered and often replaced with different technology solutions to bring them up to date. The level of existing asset investment in dispatchable energy, the generation mix will require fewer traditional base load units and more utility-scale renewable sources.

This major shift from conventional central generation, heavily reliant on coal, gas and oil, to a more decentralised system and variable sources that bring solar, wind, hydro, hydrogen and nuclear into the mix where a greater reliance on storage of energy is closer to the point of consumption is radical in all this means to have the right grid infrastructure design.

In a recent report from DNV, a thought leadership report, “Future-proofing our power grids“, their Energy Industry Insights 2022 Power Grids Research Report, DNV lays out the challenges but points towards many of the solutions.

In this report Chapter 2, entitled “Ingenuity and New Ideas” specifically caught my eye as innovation forms my core support in the Energy Sector. Let me pick out the five exciting ones in my mind.

“Congestion, complexity, uncertainty, policy, bureaucracy, supply chains —there are a daunting collection of challenges and barriers to successfully build future power grids. But there is good cause for positivity” is the starting point of the chapter.

Firstly resolving the flexibility challenge. I quote from the DNV report: “the future power system will need to balance demand and supply carefully to manage the variability of renewables. This is known as flex. Four leading solutions provide these flex needs, including generation management, demand-side management, grid coupling and energy storage. Each solution plays a role at different points and timescales, including energy storage. Energy storage has the potential to address many of the biggest challenges in building the electrical power system of the future.”- “Energy storage is a buffering system.” that solves much of the distributed power needs closer to the final consuming point.

Smarter transmission. I quote again from the DNV report, “Virtual transmission lines are examples of storage as a transmission asset (SATA) projects. In this case, the batteries can be treated as transmission assets for regulatory purposes, allowing utilities to access incentives and receive a guaranteed rate of return on their investment…..“It becomes like a piece of the transmission system”. When transmission lines become congested, power can be offloaded into storage, which can continue its journey later when congestion is lower. Virtual transmission is cheaper and quicker to deploy than new transmission lines. It has a smaller footprint and a far simpler path to planning and regulatory approval” Virtual transmission lines are examples of storage as a transmission asset (SATA) projects.

Solutions for new market dynamics. Again I quote from DNV, “As with all the changes that are taking place on our power grids, significant shifts are required at the physical, operational, digital, market, and regulatory layers of the system. “You can invest huge amounts into any particular technology, such as energy storage, but fail to realize its full societal value because you have not addressed some critical systemic issues, both physical and regulatory,” says Mark Paterson from Strategen. “These hidden structural issues, which were not apparent in a highly centralized, fossil-fuel-based system, now prevent the ‘value-stack’ of energy storage from being fully unlocked across all power system segments.”

International super-grids. Again quoting, “An advantage of HVDC super-grids is they side-step one of the key challenges involved in cross-border energy trade. “Because super-grids will use HVDC, there is no need to worry about grid synchronisation between countries,” says John Irving from the World Bank. “You’ve got a highly controllable inverter at each end that provides a security buffer. For example, in the Pan-Arab region, the Saudi Arabian system is 60Hz, whereas all the other contiguous countries operate at 50Hz. There’s no way they can ever align with each other, but they can still interconnect with HVDC. Super grids will be like an HVDC backbone that will sit on top of the HVAC systems below.”

Visibility and smarter use of data– Again, quoting from DNV’s report, “People need a view of the network to design flexible solutions and innovations for the grid,” says Florence Silver, “They need to know which assets are connected to which, and in what way. They need to design and test their own use cases. They need to make informed decisions. This relies on a common information model to ensure that operators share standardized data that are interoperable.” Sabine Erlinghagen also emphasizes the importance of interoperability and standardizing data exchange protocols. “Interoperability is crucial to the success of data-driven innovations, but we also need to be open so that operators are not stuck with one vendor; they can add modules from many vendors and create their own customizations and interface via APIs.

Building a modern Grid infrastructure

The task is a daunting one. To unwind the existing system and keep the power on, and progressively integrate all the new variables of renewable energy options (solar, wind, hydrogen, possibly nuclear), build out distributed storage and build microgrids and receiving of energy from multiple points and constant electrification expansion. Couple this with the infrastructure work of new cables, substations, intelligent smart switches, load and meter monitoring and growing data evaluations; the greater reliance on software all need installing, integrating and achieving this greater reliability, resilience and risk management.

The grid becomes a more visible energy-intensive process that has to be more reactive and dynamic to activate responses quickly and far more locally situated to limit extreme weather conditions to offer availability 24 x 7.

Six top-of-mind concerns

So knowing where to begin is partly dependent on individual parties, available funding and needs. There are six big concerns: 1 -Generational mix, managing fewer traditional base loads and building / acquiring more utility-scale renewable sources, 2 -Recognize and attempt to resolve the regulatory lag in meeting the needs of the system changes along the Grid system, 3 -Overcome the lack of qualified workers to engineer, maintain, and operate the more complex system occurring; 4—the ability to attract new capital to invest in and maintain a more resilient grid, 5 -Resolve the sufficient transmission facilities and system control assets needed, 6—the significant increases in DER.

We are right in the middle of an electrical power revolution.

The days of the highly centralized, one-directional model are being dismantled and reinvented. The pressure of “saving our planet” from fossil fuel and the need to decarbonize our energy systems are presenting further complexity at a formidable scale.

We still have an inadequate view of what we’re building towards in power generation solutions based on green energy, storage use, and the impact at the final consumers’ end. Grids will become two-way but highly unpredictable. The dynamics within the Grid System will rely on software, smart meters, applications and sensors to feed data into a highly flexible system to manage, direct and control the need for power in a more decentralized, heavily dependent world increasingly reliant on electrification.

The multiple challenges of redesigning our Power Grids is a mammoth task and needs greater recognition of all that is involved.

Main source: DNV, a thought leadership report, “Future-proofing our power grids“, their Energy Industry Insights 2022 Power Grids Research Report.

The post Our Power Grids require Reliability, Resilience and Risk management. first appeared on Innovating the Energy Transition.

I need to remind myself that my objective is to focus on different aspects of innovation needs within the energy transition. It should be simple for me, but it certainly is not!

The sheer scope of the energy transition often pulls me away in so many different directions from my innovation focal point. Equally, it can force me as a necessity to understand a significant amount of advice, detail and opinion, so I can far more appreciate where innovation has an even more significant potential to contribute.

I keep constantly investing my time in growing my further understanding, expertise, and thinking of energy transition ‘cross-over points’ where we move away from the old energy systems into the new ones.

This knowledge understanding provides some distinctive and inter-related “core” topics, which are admittedly time-consuming but essential based on the in-depth research undertaken.

What I look for is where innovation has a more catalytic effect as these might become ‘flash points’ of future challenges that need a new level of creative or innovative thinking.

The whole Energy Transition has been a growing platform to apply my innovation learning and ecosystem thinking. There are so many inter-related topics, and you have to make choices?

I have decided to narrow these inter-related topics to focus on critical areas that impact any successful energy transition.

The topics I will focus on are shown below. I have also provided links to some of my previous thoughts or views to build out these focal topics.

The critical focal points I have chosen to concentrate upon.

-Firstly on rare minerals and the impact the extraction and use these have within any future solutions requires a radically different approach to the extraction, use, disposal and will have so many fluctuating issues in the years to come,

-Secondly, the growing importance of the (smart) edge for a greater distributed energy architecture.

-Thirdly, the hydrogen story is taking off. Electrolyzers are a place for invention, research, and increased development are coming together for solutions that have more significant scaling potential and innovation.

-You have the whole topic of power generation. The shifts, structures and positioning are ripe for innovating at individual levels to resolve legacy and location and energy sources, and the solution “fits”—Nuclear, wind, solar and hydropower.

– The recognition and investment need for wholesale change in Grids and the growing value of microgrids where the adaptability and flexibility and the emphasis on robustness and resilience grow in importance.

-Storage and batteries have such an important role to play in any new energy system design. They deliver the “response” rate and much of the stabilities we require in any newly designed system.

-No one can avoid decarbonization as a topic to understand and see the need for greater carbon capture and natural solutions. My post “Themes for decarbonizing, my agenda setting post“ offers my thoughts here.

-Lastly, within this current focus area, it is necessary to keep relating to all the complexities of the climate crisis. These ongoing crises will accelerate and progressively alter so much of the energy transition, the timing of investment, and increasing understanding of impact and risk assessments.

Hard choices for all involved.

Choices are needed everywhere in the difficulties of what to invest in and when. These include facing up to the decisions required regarding when to dispose of assets and how to treat these within the P&L, especially in the growing area of stranded assets—recognizing the necessary shifts in structures and the challenges within current business models.

Also, understanding the why with the ‘evolving state and risk’ of the options needed and what options are available to deploy within this deteriorating environment is fraught with issues and business impact.

We are faced with increasing volatile times over the coming decades before any reliable stability returns. The growing recognition and urgency need multiple ‘voices’ and contributions to help those in decision-making roles to gain more significant insights and awareness of the implications.

Implications need to have a more informed, independent understanding. Then, decision-makers can execute their decisions with growing knowledge, in more effective and efficient ways.

Often, it is not recognized that innovation, in the age of disruption and radical change, equips the organization and person far better than often realized.

Each of these focus areas above is massive in its own right.

Simply each of these topic areas has the absolute need for innovation. My other focus area of ecosystem design is to create value, deliver impact and find improved ways to collaborate and learn and gain from increasing collaborations, knowledge and application.

It is finding impactful ways, as they all become interconnected for any business to advance on their journey of understanding delivering sustainable growth and new business potential.

Risk and opportunity are the two sides of the innovation coin.

My focus due to the innovation aspect naturally falls far more at the Front End Of the Energy Transition, at the discovery,  development and validation stages, as this is where innovation emerges.

Today, I see and believe that there is a real gap in many organizations by not having the robust innovation capability, capacity, and competency needed, recognized, well-established and firmly in place.

The magnitude of change required means greater reliance on researchers, scientists, and engineers and their need to ramp up to a whole new performance level. The attention to innovation throughout all of our organizations needs to become a shared sense of purpose, involvement and commitment to contribute.

I have worked in innovation advisory work for over twenty years, advising and transforming the activities and awareness, to help fill those poor understanding gaps of lacking comprehensive approaches to capabilities, capacities and competencies in innovation and the tools to drive change throughout organizations. Innovation is rarely treated as core, and it should be as change emerges from the dynamic environment that promotes innovation.

A critical decision time for Energy requires a different and radical mind shift.

We are presently at a critical decision time; the level of investment needed to achieve this energy transition is massive. The current estimate to create a safe climate system is the need to invest USD 140 trillion of new investments in the energy sector by 2050.

Much of the investments need to be directed away from fossil fuels (the primary carbon emitters) into clean technologies. It is renewables, including most power generation and end-use applications, that need to invest primarily through new generation sources of wind, solar, hydrogen, and biofuels.

This level of investment commitment will radically alter the energy landscape, where Energy is generated, by what means, and how it will be distributed, stored and consumed by us all. I am working on energy fitness landscapes as a way to plot and execute around.

Presently we are not making the essential investments we need to make.

We are all becoming painfully aware that the period until 2030 is absolutely critical for investments not just to be pledged but effectively deployed on the ground in the physical solutions and effective operation needed to make this energy transition required on track to reach the climate goals.

Innovation is critical in this energy transition. I have a clear role to play.

We need to move from research and development through engineering validation into pilot and scaling solutions, at speed, requiring a different innovation approach from discovery to execution.

What is recognized increasingly is that we do not have the luxury of evaluating radical change over standard lifetime returns or observing others over the years, we need to be highly proactive in innovation from discovery to final execution at scale. There is the need to raise validation and take higher risks than in more stable times.

We need to be more pioneering. Without a coordinated and leadership direction, the efforts and the risk will always remain cautious without guarantee or point of crisis. Scientists, engineers and researchers are, by nature, often conservative. There is a need for leadership to instil the imperative to reevaluate risk, seek out opportunities at high speed, and push for discovery and experiment constantly.

We also need to encourage this different mind shift of acceptable risk. Having an innovation mindset helps.

So for me, the energy transition is at the forefront of “cutting edge” innovation to deliver; this is why I have been increasing my attention to understanding, investigation, research, and become more immersed in the changes and challenges, issues, and barriers.

I need to emphasize my positioning and what I offer in innovation system design and building knowledge and expertise. To support and help deliver innovative solutions, I suggest my multipliers for innovation at the front end of the energy transition.

The ability to help discover, see and effectively manage the change in solutions and recognize and build out the business case for building a more robust and sustaining innovation system is critical for the future energy transitions we need to find and then put into place.

As I said in the opening to this post: I need to remind myself that my (sole) objective is to exclusively focus on different aspects of innovation” to help in this energy transition.

I need you as the vehicle and mechanism to deliver! I deliver innovation understanding and capability as the business promise return.

The post Understanding the innovation needs of the energy transition first appeared on Innovating the Energy Transition.

Thomas Kiessling, the CTO of Siemens Smart Infrastructure, provided in a keynote at the Enlit Europe event, held in Milan between 30th November to 2nd December 2021 his thoughts on how to prepare as an Energy Company for significant disruption  He outlined in twenty-odd minutes keynote his transformation list to enable this with “All of us will go through disruption and opportunity.”

When anyone argues from the start of their keynote: “that no one would dispute that the energy sector is ripe for disruption, we have to go through profound change.” Then further adding, “there is a need to transform the systems radically“, you indeed start paying attention.

Kiessling said the industry “has entered a much greater degree of uncertainty. And uncertainty needs entrepreneurs; it needs trial and error, and it needs system-scale innovation.”

Emerging from the recent CoP26 held in Glasgow between 31st October to 12th November 2021, the push towards a net-zero future is the reality ahead. “After COP26, no one would dispute that the energy sector is ripe for disruption. We have to go through profound change.”

The CoP26 outcome calls for a fundamental, profound system change within the energy system and the global need for the whole energy community to cope with this net-zero need.

Kiessling cited a recent report from Boston Consulting and the German Federation of Industry, recognizes that no sector today is set up correctly for the change that needs to happen and argues this German perspective reflects across the Globe. He cited a doubling of electricity demand in the next 20 to 25 years, with a requirement of a tripling of the supply of PV and Wind firstly. “Each makes up part of a massive “collective” challenge.”

Kiessling suggests we are entering “a period of uncertainty.” and his view is uncertainty calls for Entrepreneurs as much ahead within the energy system changes ahead will have high levels of “trial and error.”

He calls for a regulatory framework to encourage flexibility and innovation and, at the same time, to ensure that production (of Electricity) needs to be secure, resilient and the supply significantly increased.

Various “asides” are provided throughout this review.

* I have provided some “asides” to clarify or explain as well to help put a further context for a broader reading community, as the keynote was given to an audience of energy experts. Some additional examples were sought from Thomas Kiessling following this keynote to illustrate his points, it makes this review longer, but it brings added value.

There are parallels with other significant industrial disruptions

Kiessling drew parallels with other industrial areas that have gone through similar and significant disruptions, such as telecommunications, factory automation and even data centres, stating there is a lot to learn from these examples.

• My aside here is that those industries did go through massive disruption. Perhaps the power grid can be considered the most complex system humanity ever built, as all our energy consumption is directly linked to power consumption. Equally, the electrical power grid has only added increased complexity over time.
• Second aside here: A major part of the energy transition is it is moving from a traditional vertically integrated hierarchy into a new form of operating within a more open “smart, intelligent grid” to enable an instantaneous, on all-the-time, safe, two-way passage, of information and energy needs will become a real game-changer. We can learn from other significant disruptions, but the energy transition is, for many, the most complex, operationally and technically demanding.

As Thomas Kiessling rightly points out in this keynote, combining operational technology, managing (differently) the physical assets and underlying technology is the set of things we need to manage together.

Preparing the Energy Company- a transformation approach

The primary point of his keynote was “how to prepare as an Energy Company” for the challenges ahead where a seven-fold increase in renewables with still the number one objective of having the security of supply and resilience within the system being paramount.

The structure of the keynote for Energy System Change

The keynote provided seven needs for transitional change.

Today as we transform our power generation into renewables, we face ageing powerlines, struggling to add capacity, a lack of (real-time) awareness, difficulties in controlling the voltage, especially at the grid edge.

Kiessling used specific examples of the needs in Electricity and the Grid Edge to underline the changes needed to be undertaken.

Firstly today, the need is to apply cutting edge technology.

Transition need one: The security of supply, resilience, and automation

Point One: Kiessling points out we will see less inertia and less short circuit power in the networks. There will need to be more sophisticated fault detection algorithms. Kiessling points out the likely need is to change the network protection architecture of the network itself. For example, the overcurrent and distance protection might need to be substituted by differential protections. AI technology will help to do this.

The good news here suggested by Thomas Kiessling is that AI and Analytics are well on their way to help in this transformation to control and operate the network in a “real-time” fashion. This shift in managing the system’s demands becomes a major transiting challenge.

• As an aside here: Historically, for example, in the U.S. power grid, inertia from conventional fossil, nuclear, and hydropower generators was abundant—and thus taken for granted in the planning and operations of the system. But as the grid evolves with increasing penetrations of inverter-based resources—e.g., wind, solar photovoltaics, and battery storage—that do not inherently provide inertia, questions have emerged about the need for inertia and its role in the future grid. Understanding the role of inertia requires understanding the interplay of inertia and these other services, particularly primary frequency response, which is derived mainly from relatively slow-responding mechanical systems.

Point two made here was shifting from static monitoring to a more dynamic setup. The present static load flow calculation to operate the network needs different thinking. As rotating masses are progressively removed, it will require different approaches with renewables towards a more dynamic data-driven environment.

• Aside here– examples provided later by Thomas Kiessling on issues that support this point two:
  • Static load flow calculation will not detect wide-area power swings, which might cause tripping of circuit breakers.
  • Such power swings might increase when rotating masses are decommissioned from the network.
  • Dynamic Stability Supervision is needed, typically using Phasor measure units.
  • There are promising technologies to detect upcoming dangerous situations early in a world of volatility.

Kiessling liked this, in an interesting comparison, to “resembling a patient-monitoring system during heart surgery” – one that was dynamic, self-healing and would evolve into a “system of systems”. This monitoring system needs to understand the system’s metrics in a real-time fashion to understand if dangerous situations are coming over the network to respond to these.

Point three– the need for self-healing networks. Closed-loop switching to help isolate and restore network segments in fast fashions and apply a very different total fault metric to this.

The need comes to the point of a system of systems for semi-autonomous parts of the network, driven by renewables can then manage themselves and contribute to the overhaul resilience of the network, so it becomes a “resilient, decentralized and autonomous system”.

• Aside here: This is taking the smart grid as a System of Systems (SOS) which moves towards operation independence of the elements, the ability to manage within a network the autonomy of these elements, as well as have an evolutionary development to retire at any time without causing an impact to other parts of the system, provide for emergent behaviour to meet the demands for a clean, economical and efficient way by all in the system design and finally allow for geographic distribution to be highly dispersed and linked through information exchange channels.

These transitions will need industry cooperation to mature these technologies and set all the energy systems up for the planned and expected growth.

As pointed out in the keynote- we all need to learn how to deal with data, and this is a cultural change where the need for data scientists, data lakes and IT/OT need to come together in new, radically different ways.

Transition need 2: Digitalization and Data

The challenge is validating and enriching the data to make it useable.

One example provided here is how Smart Meters are now going beyond just billing, but a deeper verification for providing data that increases the awareness of the network of power consumption, specifically on the grid edge. This shift enables improved metrics, planning and operational management for capacity planning, better aggregation insights, forecasting potential, ultimately improving the industry’s capital efficiencies and allowing the prosumer to participate.

Aside: Siemens re-launched their meter data management software EnergyIP at the Enlit Europe event, where its focus has a higher level of user-centricity and supporting customers to get ready for future changes to the energy system.  Links to the PRESS RELEASE and MORE information, taken from the Siemens website

Transition need 3: Innovation and proactivity

The use of power electronics, inverter-based resources will inform and stabilize the grid and protect the infrastructure.

• Aside here: Invertor-based resources including wind, solar and storage can quickly detect frequency deviations and respond to system imbalances. These “fast-frequency responses” can provide response rates faster than traditional mechanical responses from conventional generators, thereby reducing the need for inertia.

One example offered within the keynote was operating, simulating and monitoring islands (actual physical islands) as rotation free, here Siemens has several larger-scale projects around the world.

The massive opportunities here is to system scale innovation and reinvention, yet there are three fundamental issues to tackle

1. Inverters from different manufacturers require generic inverter models enabling standardization across the industry to achieve a rotator free network.
2. Challenge two: In larger transmission scenarios the inverters are located at a larger distance and this increases the risk of more weakly damped oscillations. Therefore, we need accurate simulation models and algorithms and present challenge
3. The issue of time-varying eigen modes is a challenge to be addressed. As the generation changes between conventional and inverter-based (or renewable) generation from hour to hour, the oscillatory behaviour of your power system will change, this requires an operator support system that continuously analyses the dynamics and if needed, the power system needs to adjust on the fly to secure N-1 failure security

In conclusion, to get to a rotation, free network in most countries calls for a system scale innovation for the energy community to work together to resolve and scale these specific challenges.

Transition need 4: Dealing with Cooperation at all levels

For example, TSOs and DSOs must cooperate more to cope with volatile inputs from renewables

Offered following the keynote to explain this cooperation point Kiessling gave a concrete example of how such cooperation can help speed progress to carbon-free networks:

With less and less TSO control of conventional power plants and rotating masses, the TSO’s mission to secure grid balance will be harder to achieve. This is because the TSO has no direct control over RES at the distribution grid. That’s where DSO comes into play. The DSO can react to TSO control signals, effectively providing ancillary services by aggregating DER and DSR This allows operators to reduce TSO side issues like redispatch, which has increased dramatically in some countries in recent years

In one of Siemens research projects cooperating with multiple TSOs / DSOs, this work has verified this works using real network data of TSOs, and are now working on deploying this with a number of TSOs

• Aside: Having clear definitions of data to be exchanged, recognizing network development in demand and generation forecasts, establishing the ancillary services, load shedding, and capacity markets will all need greater collaboration. Exchanging planning information, coordinating technical studies to assess constraints on the system, dealing with congestion management, having common grid user understanding and free exchanges on available network capacity, all needs listening and collaborating more in the new system needs.

Transition need 5: Standardization and scalability

The keynote comes back to evolving into this vision of a system of systems. The system will resemble more of a system of systems, where energy nodes will take autonomous decisions that contribute to overall grid stability, only possible with standardization among nano, Micro, distribution and transport grids.

• Aside Standardization matters because larger power systems will have many grid-forming inverters from different vendors. There is a need to harmonize cyber security standards so as to ensure a common level of cyber security for the entire, interconnected energy system and Cooperation between TSO and DSO for ancillary services and transport grid balance requires interconnection standards.

Transition need 6: Regulations for flexible investment plans

As pointed out by Thomas Kiessling we need a regulatory environment that builds digitalization into incentive frameworks. To build on this

We need to simplify data collection across the industry already at the point of asset registration and there need to be energy data best practices that are embraced by operators

To speed innovation, regulators should give grid infrastructure stakeholders (including equipment manufacturers) access to past operational data so they can model solutions. At present, the network operators often have a hard time getting innovation investments approved by regulators, even as research projects with part of the issues coming from digitalization investment, by nature, will lead to a certain amount of innovative trial and error, as is the case of every innovation

Such an investment is in competition with simply adding hardware assets most of the time with a fixed rate of asset capital return. The regulator and the DSO understand this process much better. One way to evolve this logic is to start looking at business outcomes

What is the asset base needed to deliver a given amount of energy? Capital efficiency incentives need to be introduced into the discussion. The flexibility to deploy Opex or Capex needs to be increased.

Here lies a cultural and transformational problem, as regulators have been “engrained” to approve and measure in a certain way, to apply known metrics or handed down-regulation requirements to safeguard energy.

You have to start with “what do we dare in the industry?”, “what do we focus upon?” and how can all involved in the energy transition collaborate, learn and work together.

Aside: that would be unique but will be necessary for all stakeholders within the Energy system

Transition need 7: Consumer/prosumer focus

It is forecasted that Distributed Energy Resources will grow sevenfold by 2030. At a changing grid edge, data is (simply) not there, to prove that investment or change.

In a further follow-up, due to limits of time within the keynote, the points were offered by Kiessling in a set of challenges to be addressed.

Today’s reality: DSOs often don’t know if authorizing the next EV charging stations leads to voltage band violations. The DSO might also curtail solar production expecting overvoltage events

This is not based on data at the point of potential under or over voltage, since that data is rarely available today. There is then risk and leading to a perception in the industry that parts of the network could actually carry twice the load without a problem, but due to lack of data the generation & load balance is kept well below the actual capacity

How can this be changed and what help within the evolving grid edge provide a change that allows for the transformation to take shape?

So, what if you could estimate the status of LV lines based on a combination of real-time data available typically at the substation level, plus meter data, even if you get that meter only once a day or periodically

Siemens is working with DSOs on pilots to use neural networks to estimate if and where voltage issues arise both on load and on the DER supply side.  These methods achieve better transparency, enabling the DSO to curtail less, and authorize more new loads like EV chargers

This information, combined with peak shaving, load shifting, storage systems to smooth out supply and demand, will go a long way to accommodate new loads and prosumer systems.

Thomas Kiessling’s suggestion is in the application of Neural Networks- “Achieving more informed decisions”

The possible solution to make changes in the Grid Edge is to use substation data alongside offline smart meters. That data can be extrapolated to identify hotspots and load needs and becomes a Network Grid Edge.

This approach avoids having more sensors on every meter or connecting point to save time and expense. It can be pushed out over time and experience to connect into the final energy-consuming point.

• Aside here: A neural network is likely to be a series of algorithms that endeavours to recognize underlying relationships in a set of data through a process that mimics the way the human brain operates or, in this case, the energy system. In this sense, neural networks refer to systems of neurons, either organic or artificial in nature. An artificial neuron receives a signal, then processes it and can signal neurons connected to it. The “signal” at a connection is a real number, and the output of each neuron is computed by some non-linear function of the sum of its inputs. The connections are called edges. Neurons and edges typically have a weight that adjusts as learning proceeds. Source (partly Wikipedia)

Achieving more informed decisions

This proposal made by Thomas Kiessling can provide a more apparent determination of the grid edge’s state and provide the state of the LV network for more informed decisions and (more targeted) capital investment.

So here, innovation and creative thinking are being applied to solve a current problem holding back the needed Grid Edge shift to the intelligent use of consumption and demand data. Insights gained will improve the knowledge on the network without deployment at scale, of sensors to provide an assessment of data close to demand.

• Aside: For me, the idea of the concept suggested, Neural Networks offers the potential to bring about change, bring data, AI, technology into the equation to accelerate the Grid Edge was the most intriguing point.

So, in the conclusion of Thomas Kiessling’s Keynote.

We are in a disruptive phase; Kiessling provided in his keynote a transformation list of needs to follow, specifically working through issues and challenges both in the transmission, distribution and Grid Edge networks. He gave many rich examples that are already shifting Energy and Grid Edge design. These offered radically different ways to manage the demand and supply, reflecting the changing nature of power generation, distribution and grid edge supply.

Thomas Kiessling’s final comment was we do need to “wrap our minds around it” to undergo such a disruptive time of profound system change. It is how the energy community comes together and finds ways to imagine, collaborate to learn and share.

I found the keynote stimulating, thoughtful and informative.

The post How to prepare as an Energy Company for significant disruption – Thomas Kiesslings Enlit Keynote first appeared on Innovating the Energy Transition.

Image rights Siemens EnergyIP Mosaic®

I was looking at the changes made by Siemens on their meter data management software on their recent relaunched EnergyIP Mosaic®; their next generation of the leading EnergyIP® Meter Data Management.

“Siemens is taking its market-leading meter data management software to the next level, supporting customers to get ready for future changes to the energy system,” said Sabine Erlinghagen, CEO of Digital Grid at Siemens Smart Infrastructure.

Siemens has taken a design thinking and co-creation approach to understanding customer needs.  Siemens worked extensively with multiple customers globally to understand their exact needs when it comes to meter data management.

The relaunched MDM software focused on enhancing user-centricity

EnergyIP Mosaic® has not only changed its look and feel but opened up new efficient ways of performing tasks, providing better situational awareness for customers.  The solution has focused explicitly on workflow improvements, giving the new software a more efficient, intuitive, insightful, adaptable and ready to use sense and feel.

With the new relaunched software, users can see everything clearly on one screen through EnergyIP Mosaic’s new, modern interface that can swiftly bring together all the information you need on one screen.

This update differs significantly from the past EnergyIP Mosaic® offers a new, modern interface that swiftly brings together all the information on one screen, whereas in the past, there were requirements to open multiple tabs in the UI. Data, correlations, root causes, and other advanced functionalities are intuitive and easily understandable with interactive visualizations and shortcuts.

“EnergyIP Mosaic® lets you find what you need and understand what you see.”

Image rights Siemens EnergyIP Mosaic®

This next-generation solution offers far greater efficiency and flexibility to busy users. The modern interface is easy to learn and use, improving customer experience. Management can quickly review dashboards and data on the go using a tablet to help in any facilitation or deliver a quicker answer for actions and insights.

New capabilities of EnergyIP® MDM

A significantly increased focus on Event Data and Action Management (EDAM)

Do you want to save time by detecting anomalies automatically?
There is so much your data is telling you: the health of your hardware, safety issues, revenue loss, meter installation issues and operational issues. EDAM automatically analyses AMI data, events and interval read with multiple detection rules created by you for your business needs.

Achieving greater Business Monitoring

Do you know what is going on with your operations on a daily basis?

Remove the “black box” and increase the transparency of AMI data to make quick, confident decisions. Users can drill down to investigate data collection and quality issues, see trends and spot geographical clusters of potential service issues points. The users can quickly gain situational awareness and better visibility into data quality issues for effective resolution.

KPI’s significantly improve through this increased transparency. For instance, now it provides KPI potential for what percentage of service points have complete data from a business perspective, improving the data quality. Also built-in is the ability for KPI’s to be constructed for different ratepayer groups, customer classes, AMI systems etc.

The new software gives easier viewing, more informed data to make quicker, confident decisions from data collection and exception management to billing and data exporting, as well as monitoring of usage anomalies; you will have insight into the data and be equipped to act. The real value of providing actionable interactive dashboards for both ongoing and exception resolution handling has become a critical feature.

The availability of Software-as-a-Service is part of this relaunch

Are your critical IT personnel overloaded with maintaining an ever-changing IT landscape? The new EnergyIP Mosaic® offers three different EnergyIP Deployment Models.

So what are the different benefits and trade-offs?

The most traditional MDM model is EnergyIP MDM On-Premise. This MDM model offers the utilities a license model. As the customer, they are responsible for purchasing the licenses, storing the data and additional costs that will occur regarding maintenance updates and/or software upgrades. It is highly customizable and configurable but has its limits and cost considerations to evaluate, depending on the future business plans and the available capital.

The second option is the Hosted one; this is growing in its popularity with the increasing need for data to be stored in the Cloud. Hosted offers the customization and configuration of on-premise, but customers save space and reduce IT costs by storing data in the Cloud. Therefore, the data is NOT stored in a data centre at a customer’s physical location. It is stored in a private cloud environment that only the customer has access to.

The third option is Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and is rapidly becoming the future for software and is now available for EnergyIP® MDM SaaS globally. EnergyIP MDM SaaS was launched in early 2021 in the United States. SaaS offers unique benefits because it is a subscription model, and data is stored on a secure but public hosted site. EnergyIP MDM SaaS uses AWS, Amazon Web Services. SaaS is lower cost and has a faster implementation time.

SaaS has all the great benefits of EnergyIP MDM.

Having available all the functionalities, SaaS provides the real option of reducing your risks, cost and complexity in a preconfigured service with Cloud-based security and regular upgrades to allow the MDM provider to focus on their core business and have a very limited IT infrastructure investment and workload pressures. This option is an all-in-one subscription. Implementation can be rapid, possibly within three months, depending on the connectivity and the existing designed communications network and its integration into any more comprehensive technology solutions planned or in use and dependencies on its interoperability and cybersecurity assessments.

Intelligence and building sustainable action capabilities

As Sabine Erlinghagen, CEO of Digital Grid at Siemens Smart Infrastructure, states: “We need intelligence – be it automation or artificial intelligence – to provide improved guidance to grid operators. Digitalization is the key enabler to make grids flexible enough to handle the rising complexity caused by an ever-increasing infeed of renewable energy and a growing share of EVs on the road while remaining resilient.

To master the new complexity, we have to turn data into knowledge and knowledge into sustainable action. With our digital technologies, we want to help utilities safeguard and even accelerate the energy transition.

We need to find better ways to use the already collected data for new purposes. For example, in the past, smart meter data was used for billing purposes only. But data collected by smart meters is extremely valuable for other processes as well.”

EnergyIP can be central to current or future add-on applications.

EnergyIP will be ready to support what customers change or try to accomplish in the future (e.g. changing rates, changing AMI infrastructure, new data privacy and cyber security regulations, exchanging IT landscape, new value add use cases.

EnergyIP Portfolio leads the market in MDM and related applications

Discover the full potential of your data beyond meter-to-cash with add on applications such as Analytics Foundation, Revenue Protection, Integration Adaptors, Low Voltage Outage Management, Advanced Device Management, Energy Engage, Prepay and Front End Processor.

Siemens sums up the result of this relaunch.

“We worked extensively with our User Advisory Board, the largest global user community dedicated exclusively to MDM, to understand their exact operational needs. EnergyIP Mosaic® has not only changed its look and feel but opened up new efficient ways of performing tasks, providing better situational awareness for customers. We’ve improved task efficiency by up to 85%, and situational assessment time has been reduced by 60%. By focusing on workflow improvements, the new software is more efficient, intuitive, insightful, and adaptable,” states Ming Ho, Senior Director of User Experience and Strategic Innovations.

Find out more on the relaunched EnergyIP Mosaic®, the next generation of the leading EnergyIP® Meter Data Management.

Image rights Siemens EnergyIP Mosaic®

So to unlock the full value of your smart metering investment, take a visit and learn more about EnergyIP®’s Metering Solutions on the Siemens site here, where you’ll find all the latest EnergyIP Metering materials, including brochures and datasheets as well as customer support information.

Siemens EnergyIP Mosaic® “lets you find what you need and understand what you see”

The post Exploring Siemens relaunch of their next generation of Meter Data Management first appeared on Innovating the Energy Transition.

Clean energy, growing the potential of Electricity – Image rights RethinkX

I have been absorbing a couple of interesting research reports from RethinkX,  an independent think tank that analyzes and forecasts the speed and scale of technology-driven disruption and its implications across society. They produce impartial, data-driven analyses that identify pivotal choices by investors, business, policy and civic leaders to stimulate thinking and promote avenues of disruptive change.

Firstly on Rethinking Climate Change on how Humanity can choose to reduce emissions 90% by 2035 through the disruption of Energy, Transportation, and Food with existing technologies.

Secondly, the Energy Report – Rethinking Energy 2020-2030 100% Solar, Wind, and Batteries is Just the Beginning states we are on the cusp of the fastest, deepest, most profound disruption of the energy sector in over a century. Like most disruptions, this one is being driven by the convergence of several key technologies.

Both of these reports are well worth the time to really read and absorb. This is some “sterling” work by  Tony Seba, James Arbib, Adam Dorr and other members of the RethinkX team.

So where do you “sit” on this report and the acceptance and realities of the proposal in time, consequences and complexity?

They use the Seba Technology Framework shown here

Ownership: Tony Seba and RethinkX

I want to summarize the key points from the “rethinking energy” report

These extracts summarize the value of focusing on a clear set of disruptive technologies that can displace and expand the energy system in a relatively short period as the solutions are proven and now need to be rapidly scaled and deployed.

-Taking the Energy report here focuses on the convergence of three clean energy technologies: solar photovoltaics, onshore wind power and lithium-ion batteries. (SWB). *The report was published in October 2020, and I would argue since the initial research, and today you could add offshore wind, all (longer) storage and batteries. The result would be even more positive and dramatic.

-Their argument is applying this SWB set of solutions. It is both physically possible and economically affordable to meet 100% of electricity demand with the combination of solar, wind and batteries by 2030 across the entire continental United States. Overwhelmingly the majority of other populated regions of the world can also capture the tradeoff relationship between electricity generation and energy storage. (Key Finding point one and two)

-100% SWB will provide the cheapest possible electricity system by 2030, pushing the existing conventional generation power plants operating on coal, gas, or even nuclear power as uneconomical

-SWB can provide a whole new architecture that provides different sets of rules and metrics. This truly disruptive energy system shifts existing thinking of minimizing energy use (on demand) to maximizing as it is not harmful to the environment to utilize electricity generated from sunshine and wind fully. Still, actually, it is harmful to let it go to waste. In maximizing output and utilization, there is no fuel or waste to minimize.

-100% SWB systems eliminate all greenhouse emissions from the existing electrical power sector, taking out and looking to displace fossil fuel in extending electricity into residential, commercial, industrial, transportation and agriculture.

Combining with electric vehicles, a 100% SWB system can eliminate all fossil fuel and greenhouse gas emissions in the electricity sector and road and rail transportation sectors, taking out a huge carbon footprint.

-SWB will not merely replace conventional power generation technologies on a 1 to 1 substitution but can set about to create a much larger electricity system by reducing the marginal cost of energy to near-zero for much of a year.

-Surplus power creates new novel business models, products and services and markets across many industries (hard to abate) with dramatic societal capabilities and delivery considerations of potential new economic prosperity for many regions of the world that are excluded today.

-Applications including the electrification of road transportation, heating, water desalination and treatment, waste processing, recycling, metal smelting and refining, chemical processing, heavy industry and assorted manufacturing due to the prospect of near-zero marginal cost clean energy by electrifying their processes.

-Cryptocurrency mining, cloud computing, and communication also gain and rapidly achieve carbon removal from the use of clean energy generated by the SWB approach.

-Surplus power offers a significant potential for electricity being on demand 24 x 7 all year round with the appropriative considerations to building a distribution grid that is not just adapted but designed specifically for SWB.

-SWB can be autocatalytic by dedicating a growing portion of its surplus to the manufacture and recycling of solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries themselves to reduce the manufacturing “greenhouse” effect of using fossil fuels today in production as well as extracting for reuse of rare material.

Gaining recognition and acceptance of the inevitable, perhaps?

Gaining acceptance, focusing on delivering solutions at speed and scale, recognizing the transformative dynamics of disruption to an energy system that needs to move from the old to a new one, recognizing the cost of write off and stranded assets will be a significant part of the cost of this transition

We need to accept the disruption of the conventional technologies is now inevitable and placing as much of our transforming energies into assets for building this SWB Energy System is rational from this point forward.

We need to speed up the energy transition and completely transform the electric power system in this decade. Solar and wind generating capacity can exceed the total electricity generating capacity installed today.

Renewables at an accelerated pace of replacement are required

The SWB approach is the cheapest available option for power generation on a 2030 timeframe, in many cases, forces existing operations to shut down and be written off and provide a future surplus of energy to stop curtailment (old paradigm) and push out towards extending the electricity market

Operating on the premise of extractive, depletion and polluting needs a radical overhaul. That was past centuries; we need to recognize we must have clean energy that stops greenhouse gases in its tracks.

A new operating model for any energy transition needs to seek to minimize costs, maximize benefits, seek wider engagements and different value creation business models so every level of society and the economy can benefit.

The report raises the challenge, who will embrace and capture the extraordinary social, economic, political and environmental benefits that an SWB system can offer?

The dramatically different architecture, boundaries, regulatory field and capabilities are massive to tackle. Still, as suggested, if a new system is much larger than the old one it replaces, then disruption is inevitable.

Let me begin to wrap up on the disruption effects

Below is a great visualization of the effects of disruption with their casual feedback loops that drive disruption

I quote from the report to wrap up my read

In over a century, we are on the cusp of the fastest, deepest, most profound disruption of the energy sector. Like most disruptions, this one is being driven by the convergence of several key technologies whose costs and capabilities have been improving on consistent and predictable trajectories – namely, solar photovoltaic power, wind power, and lithium-ion battery energy storage.

My opinion of the Energy Report is it is far too optimistic and perhaps simplistic

• I commend it on its singularity of approach, focusing (exclusively) on Solar, Wind and Batteries for a rapid abundance of electricitiy. I wish it was so easy.
• The thrust of the report is focusing on having an abundance of electricity that brings costs of energy down to levels where significant investments and expansion into those harder-to-abate areas has a massive incentive.
• Yet the levels of complexity are going to cause a real drag on the highly ambitious target date of 2030. The investments are not just in new energy sources (solar, wind, etc) but what happens to the significant levels of stranded assets and the cost (to whom).
• The ramping up in solar and wind is massive, thousands of wind installations become hundred of thousands and the raw material availability, the production ramping up, the logistics are formidable.
• Then you have the approval process, from the federal government to local government and local communities and the impositions of studies commissioned by different and opposing groups.
• The sheer amount of new capital and the projected return on investments, when you include stranded assets have real implications on balance sheets, by the investors etc. Compressing time periods raises greater risk.
• To make such a switch over to clean energy is not just its production alone, it is the enormous changes and investments in infrastructure. The transmission and distribution networks and subsequent planning permissions and the building of national-wide grids is daunting to say the least.
• So the level of change within such a short period, the different levels of decision complexity is highly ambitious.
• To decarbonize in each country, to achieve this over the globe has so many political and social implications.
• The likelihood is we will be facing a real crisis, in extreme weather and unhealthy environments to galvanize all aspects of sôciety yet to bring together all the parts of such an energy transition in such a limited time I struggle with.
• The consequences of a slow ramping up in this decade will be potentially disastrous but the political, business and social will are far from being in place.
• There is a gathering of reductionists looking to have a narrow mindset promoting linear progression and not “seeing” the disruptive forces of radical change in the energy transformation; they are holding on far too much to the incumbent system.

I think the report provides a “clean” vision but can this actually happen within such a short time, even if solutions are already available. The level of change needs a much longer time frame.

What is right is the imperative of urgency to simply get on is not wrong, time is rapidly stacking up against us. The idea of focusing and the massive ramping up of clean energy (wind and solar) for electricity as the real top priority to compress energy prices, shifts the economics and over time, the solutions this pricing can bring to accelerate the energy transition.

***Both of these reports are well worth the time to really read and absorb, firstly on Rethinking Climate Change on how Humanity can choose to reduce emissions 90% by 2035 through the disruption of Energy, Transportation, and Food with existing technologies and Secondly the Energy Report outlined and summarized in this post.

The post Rethinking Energy is driven by Disruption first appeared on Innovating the Energy Transition.