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.

We are falling into a real trap around the efforts of much of the invention and innovation we are putting into the Energy Process. We have the danger of getting our innovation balance wrong.

We are emphasizing shifting significant resources towards energy efficiency, not real energy transition work that comes from radical or breakthrough innovations. The focus on extending prolongs what we have and does not offer the transformation affect our energy systems do require to achieve a decarbonized world over the next fifty years.

We all are accepting that the energy system needs to undergo a massive transformation, one that provides breakthrough innovations in new technology, ones that do transform the energy systems. Are we striking the right balance between incremental and breakthrough innovation? I would question this.

The efficiency trap is a classic trap of all innovators. Efficiency often triumphs over other forms of innovation, such as a more distinctive range of solutions, that give breakthrough and radical potential. Why is that important?

Focusing on improving what we have, giving it more efficiency provides a quicker return on investment and certainly extends much of what we have, it provides limited investments to give short-term better returns. All good and essential stuff, but we are in danger of missing the bigger picture that is required in the energy transition.

Efficiency or Radical, that breakthrough Innovation? Getting the balance right

The efficiency idea or concept has those lead times that can easily work within the one to three-year time frame, the classic judgement time for a management team to validate their credentials in improving the bottom line and providing revenue growth.

The management of resources, costs and commitment can be managed well on the balance sheet or even through the P&L as concepts to solutions are often tangible, the problems known to be resolved and well-scoped out in clearly defined timescales and resource need. This is the ideal ground for focusing on innovation efficiency.

Seeking out more distinctive and radical designs.

Yet we are meant to be in an Energy Transition where whole systems need more radical thinking, more evolutionary or radical in its solutions offered? These are longer-term in commitments, complexity, and often tackling the unknown, searching for new technology discovery and validation. These take time and real dedication in sustained resources. Risks get compounded and justification harder, the longer and more complex a change we are attempting to undergo.

The combining of new technology, in highly collaborative and open exploratory spaces, requires more of the unknowns in cost, resources and time. this is in search of the radical or breakthroughs from the invention, innovation, engineering and technology.

Getting the balance right in  the different types of innovation

To fully decarbonize our energy systems requires far more radical design, to shift the energy source from fossil fuels to renewables is a long-term commitment.

We naturally want to form these incremental mindsets as they yield quicker returns, often with one calendar cycle of 12 months, whereas complex issues take years, sometimes decades of dedicated effort. We expect reliable returns on investments, but this is often in direct conflict with much of the research and development that Energy transformation requires.

Most of our resources are placed in working away in the trenches of incremental improvements, and these outputs make up the vast substance of innovation activity.  Many working in these trenches of innovation on a daily basis would love to be part of a breakthrough but tend to find this is always ring-fenced for a few selected others or a distant dream beyond the capacity of one individual organisation to work upon.

The needs of the immediacy of business or the search for game-changers. 

R&D  so often is simply that gazing over the fence in envy or quietly accept this divide between incremental contribution and the need for more radical breakthroughs. Their job is to simply get on with the incremental improvements that deliver to the present needs of the business, important to stay competitive but not radical enough to revolutionize or galvanize the changes the energy system really does need to deliver on the need to rapidly decarbonize and modernize the energy process.

I believe many who work within innovation simply do not share in this delineation of innovation activity, as it divides talent into separate teams, often pitting scarce innovation resource against each other, often in many unseen ways.  This divide of activities is often a real pity. Collaboration outside established borders of individual businesses still has a long way to go to become truly open innovation.

I write a lot about collaboration needs, open innovation, building out relationships and networks of collaborators but this is a complicated process, thankfully happening at improved rates from thinking in a more platform and ecosystem design way of thinking. I write on this on my dedicated ecosystems4innovators posting site. The future of more distinctive and radical innovation comes through broader collaborations.

I would suggest organizations give this incremental area far too much of a focus in their resources and efforts, to the detriment of other options. 

We should move out of the incremental trap far more and not continue to reinforce it as many do. The Energy transition requires far more radical, distinctive and breakthrough in our innovation discovery process.

Lets consistently question the incrementalists and get them thinking more about distinctive, radical innovations as we require these for any chance to deliver on the energy transition and achieve any net zero, so often talked about but not delivered upon.

The post Are you falling into the Innovation Energy Trap? first appeared on Innovating the Energy Transition.

The pressure to stop new Coal investment is building- is that really good?

Threats & Pressures for reducing CO2 emissions

What can’t be ignored in all this action to stop coal, again to quote from the IEA report:

Steelmaking today will “kill” the Energy Transition if we do not find new innovative processes.

As the IEA report states ” New steelmaking processes are critical, but there is no one right answer”

Deep emission reductions are simply not achievable without innovation in technologies for near-zero emissions steelmaking.

Are we stopping innovation if the known Energy Providers continue to withdraw from their coal associations?

Finding a more thoughtful sustainable pathway.

The post Coal, Steelmaking and Asia first appeared on Innovating the Energy Transition.

Our landscapes seem never to change, power transmission lines spread out across the land as far as the eye can see delivering our electricity. Nothing seems to change, but nothing actually is as far from the truth.

The electricity industry is waging a sweeping transformation and in a recent report by Black & Veatch providing the present position of the state of Electricity called Strategic Directions: Electric Report, where they have gathered 600 power utility stakeholders to offer the challenges and opportunities that are occurring in the transformation being undertaken.

The challenges and opportunities are all caught up in a constantly shifting, complex ecosystem of everything, from conventional power generation to the renewable energies sources derived from the wind and sun and the significant changes underway in the use of putting in place microgrid systems.

I want to briefly summarize this report, one I would certainly recommend spending time in reading.

I have provided some of Black&Veatch’s figures to provide an opening view of the challenges and opportunities occurring in the electric power industry as a “snapshot” of what are the issues, where the investment is going. The short-term capital being made and the emerging technologies being actively considered, finally what carbon emission reductions or clean energy investments are being considered over the next ten years and beyond ten years.

The most challenging issues facing the electric industry

Hydrogen and Battery Storage are both being actively looked at or phased into the energy systems and will feature far more in the future to offer sustainability, reliability and resiliency as energy providers continue to decarbonize. Hydrogen is presently seen as a “beyond ten-year” investment, but that might significantly change if the technology ramps up in the next few years to provide scale in alternative fuels.

The report also is indicated that growing demand for electric vehicles and prosumers who want to feel empowered, engagements and feeling more in charge of generating and consuming their own energy.

The integration of generation, transmission and distribution assets is finding adaptive ways to keep ageing systems functioning at ever-increasing levels of efficiency, more resilient systems working alongside competing with the increasing shocks of severe weather, a changing climate and increased natural disasters of fire, floods and drought. The current Covid-19 pandemic has only added more complexity and the power loads moving from commercial and industrial sites to residential suburbs has added even more complications.

Where is investment going to support existing assets?

Today it is becoming essential that the whole electricity system has a clear “line-of-sight” so all these variables can be better managed. A digital backbone needs to be rapidly placed in parallel with the physical needs of any power system.

The need for constant innovation practices is demanding radical overhauls of how the electricity system is managed. To achieve reliable, resilient energy supplies needs a transformation that is formidable in its challenges, where each utility facing their own unique solutions.

The shifts occurring in short-term investments

As the power industry responds to changing consumer behaviours, unpredictable load patterns, and increasing use of distributed energy resources (DER) and other customer-driven nuances are transforming technologies.

The focus upon Innovation increasingly is based on digital information and
communication technology, including artificial intelligence, augmented and virtual reality, blockchain technology and robotics.

Those power providers that are slow to respond to these multiple challenges and stick with a business-as-usual approach do so at their own peril, and their customers increasing frustration, increasing the risk of expensive stranded assets and higher consumer electricity prices.

Emerging Technologies becoming part of the integrated operations

The next-generation business and capability models, coupled with the deploying of new technologies ranging from DER to digitalization and
analytics across competitive and regulated markets.

One of the most exciting changes will be creating a digital twin of power plants or electric grids because it informs power system operators with understanding possible responses to certain scenarios and emergency events before they happen. The emergence of the internet of energy is coming upon all in the energy systems. We will have IoT, IIoT and now IoE within our needs to understand and integrate.

As Electricity Systems undergo some radical changes, the pace and dynamics are all adding fresh pressure on utility providers. The way business will be undertaken will rapidly change as the energy portfolio undergoes a dramatic change.

The shifts to meet carbon emissions and clean energy goals being considered.

Black&Veatch produce some excellent reports. This one providing the present position of the state of Electricity called Strategic Directions: Electric Report, where they have gathered 600 power utility stakeholders to offer the challenges and opportunities that are occurring in the transformation being undertaken is no exception. It offers a really good view of the shifts being undertaken in the Electricity Power Market.

The post The many challenges facing the electricity industry. first appeared on Innovating the Energy Transition.

Getting to the point of the digitalization of Energy in a holistic way, not piecemeal as in the past is going to take a massive mindset shift within the energy industry. We need a dedicated internet of energy that brings energy together in ecosystem designs and platform delivery.

There are so many pressures to invest fresh capital to replace existing aging infrastructure, to adapt energy sources increasingly to accommodate renewables, and to build out the resilience within the energy system, adding new storage options and reduce the variabilities and demand fluctuations.  

You can go on and on in need to invest in a very challenging, changing environment for energy. Layering-in digitalization on top just adds to the need for change, we need to fully integrate it as a core necessity.

Having a greater insight and understanding of the management of energy is going to prove crucial in the future and “going digital” provides the essential energy transformation we need, being connected up.

I certainly feel we are on the cusp of a new digital era in energy. Digital technology has been involved in the energy system for decades but its time is now to be central to any new energy management system. We need to manage not just individual assets but manage the ‘connected’ energy system from the supply, through transmission into demand.

Digitalizing the energy system can provide much of the understanding of where, when, and what to invest in and validate the why in the relevant data supporting. We need a clear line-of-sight and data needs to deliver transparency and insights to all involved in managing or providing and consuming energy.

I want to first step back here in the post to frame why the digitalization of energy is of critical importance. This ‘where, when, why, and what’ I will cover in a series of posts in the coming months that will be grouped on a new posting site, specifically dedicated to digital and energy. More on that later.

Here I want to provide an opening context on Digitalizing the Energy System, building the why

What is new, is the pace of digitalization occurring through technological innovation, providing solutions that enable the energy system to be transformed?

Digitalization across the energy landscape is determining the system-wide changes of connectivity; it is linking, monitoring, aggregating, and controlling assets to help resolve a fundamental “blurring” between who and what supplies and who consumes energy to provide a greater ‘line-of-sight to energy management for all who need to know.

Having a reliable energy system is one of the enablers for economic growth and social well-being.

We are presently shifting away from a total reliance on an all centralized power system into distributed solutions and flexible options in fuel inputs and their management.

The old paradigm of central grids will undoubtedly continue to provide the energy infrastructure backbone in years to come, it will remain central to keeping the balance within the electricity transmission network.

The changes are occurring more ‘down the line’ in designing distributed systems. There will be significant differences at the local level ( variable inputs and final point of supply) to trade and deliver energy through different grid edge designs and services.

Digitalization brings us closer to the end-user – knowing your grid edge and how to respond

The closer in proximity to end-use (homes, business, vehicles) is the grid edge as the hardware (things we can touch and see) such as solar panels, meters, energy storage systems, thermostats, appliances, and building controls. These “things” are being designed to connect and combined with grid edge software that triggers demand and optimization.

We are achieving through software the ability for greater data analytics or planning information that allows for a new form of aggregation. This gives us all a greater engagement in managing our energy consumption and begin to sell surplus electricity through the management of their own personal energy system.

What we do need to undertake as basic initial steps were nicely outlined recently in a Siemens Middle East Energy Week by Beatrix Natter, the Executive Vice President, Transmissions at Siemens.

Beatrix Natter outlined very succinctly some of the opening steps before we can see any platform for the Internet of Energy or achieve some investment value from any digitalization investment

Firstly we have to digitalize the product, each point that can provide valuable data so as to enable them to produce real-time data. This is her physical to digital step currently being undertaken, this gives the first chance to understand the operating conditions of the machine or connecting point. This delivers improved asset management.

Then the second step is to build the same digital capability into substations to understand the edge of grids. This gives options to manage power and continuity within the system

Thirdly to make connections beyond two points to begin to turn this into a dynamic data system. It is then the automation of energy flows and intelligence becomes the value of these (essential) investments from the digital investments required.

In the future, there becomes the opportunity to build a physical and digital twin that mirrors and takes all the connection points into optionality and scenario planning to plan the existing system and build-out for reducing gaps and variance in the future one.

Digitalization gives choices to all to build out a most robust model

Not only does the digitalization of the energy system provide “data understanding” and the potential for real-time information and insights, but it can also give the building blocks to validating and scenario building required to narrow the gaps between demand and supply.

To achieve this you need “line of sight” and having a fully connected digital energy system can give real-time potential and the ability to improve predictability and the different “switching” opportunities to respond in fat more timely and focused ways.

Today the energy system is planned more to be overbuilt, to power up generation rapidly to offset sudden (ofter unpredicted and surging) demand as understanding is limited to past history.  Much of the predictive understanding is based on individuals insights or data crunching, based on spreadsheets and limited estimates.

Capturing real-time data does not take out all the anticipated demand estimates that still will be judgments but more on real-time data that can give a greater richness of understanding to make more informed decisions.

The digitalization and innovation of this grid edge will transform the electricity industry as it can give a choice to the end-user on preferences, what they chose to connect into (power consuming connected devices), and give them a greater awareness of what makes up the energy chain.

The end-user can begin to demand electricity sources that are fuelled by renewable energy; they become more interested in their carbon footprint and become prosumers where they achieve higher interactions, growing expectations they are in reliable systems, and offered protection and security in what they engage within.

Digitalization can become the catalyst for engagement and connectivity within the energy system.

Its value is to provide safety, productivity, accessibility, reliability, transparency, resilience and offer sustainability and growing confidence that ‘our’ power is readily available 24 x 7.  The digitalization of the energy system provides the background in the new architecture of the energy system that interconnects and drives our energy solutions.

As more and more deployment takes place, providing new connected technology, we see autonomous cars, home systems, and connected smart buildings offered as new end-user solutions. It is the data that is allowing AI and machine learning that are giving us this new form of digital intelligence.

The application of digital technologies is widely impacting end-use.

Today we are seeing increased sensors and use of devices that are optimizing process controls, providing industrial automation, give us smart thermostats, autonomous cars, and trucks, for example.

Digitalization is shaping our industries, our transport systems, and making our buildings more intelligent. Having greater knowledge through data insight makes us smarter to manage what we have.

Digitalization Of Energy 

The goal needs to be that the digital technologies we introduce need to help us become more connected, intelligent, efficient, by having, resilience, reliability, and sustainability built into the energy system we are designing.

Energy systems are changing significantly; we are all becoming plugged into a progressively digitally renewable world. The internet of energy is way overdue to manage the changes in much of our energy transformation to reduce its complexity.

The post Building the Internet of Energy first appeared on Innovating the Energy Transition.