Image Credit: https://analyticsindiamag.com, Gaurav Burman

In an extraordinary time of being “locked down,” we appreciate the safe haven we call home, the office, or the working environment. We are expecting it to be a safe environment for us to continue to operate and provide us the comfort and protection we are all looking for.

Having intelligent connected structures is playing an increasing role in our lives, in the mission of your organization, in your loved one’s daily lives; in offices, in our building like hospitals, in government offices, in research labs or schools, and most importantly in our homes.

We often do not recognize everything that goes int our building to deliver an optimal or suitable space for us to be productive. We assume it is there, working and functioning as required. It is when something goes wrong, we begin to notice. It is when we have time to stop and look around we begin to wonder how we can improve our environments. There is a lot we can do, and as we learn to work increasingly “at a distance.”

Our buildings today have the potential to be fully connected-up digitally, controlled, and managed in the background, working away “quietly,” functioning, efficiently, and effectively. To get to this point, it needs constant monitoring and managing. Our building in the present and future need investing in.

We need to view buildings differently

We often do not stop and think about what is actually around us. It is when you appreciate an environment that has fire protection, climate control, proper ventilation, lighting, continually adjusting in heating and cooling, knowing physical security, life safety and many “simply accepted” building systems ‘quietly’ working away, all in the background, you realize it has such an impact on your daily life when you need it.

I call that quiet management, hidden in plain sight. The Intel processor story comes to mind here. It became synonymous with your computer as the central core processor that enabled your computer to work, it was essential and expected to work each time you turned your computer on.

A building needs the same central core processor reliant on technology. The core need is no different from the Intel processor, to needs to be efficient, available on-demand, sustainable, and in the case of buildings, liveable and attractive, and all that takes hard, sustained focused work.

Real estate is one of the most significant expenses we all encounter in our lives.

Real estate can be the biggest single asset for investment and highly valuable to maintain. In our building today, we are putting 40% of our global energy demand. When you also realize cities are consuming 75% plus of all global energy resources and contributing 80% to global emissions then managing the infrastructure and assets becomes critical to reduce the impact this is having on our planet.

In the past, real estate management had been regarded as sunk costs, expensed, where yield dominated decisions once it was up and functioning. Today through the change to smart connected buildings, it is seen as a real asset that continues to build value through the enhancement of its function ability and appeal.

The energy design of the building certainly needs to be optimized; the assets and resources more effectively utilized. We need to provide the essential aspects of a comfortable indoor environment that works consistently, delivering to the tenant’s needs. We need this enhanced environment for the tenant, and the landlord and also for those investing.

It is having the partnership within the services, a building provides a safe, secure and well-run facility that provides a “productive” environment. The combination of physical and digital within smart-building solutions enables the ability to deliver valuable services that “enhances” productivity and effectiveness, for those working and reliant on having a place to work.

By collecting and evaluating smart data gives us the source to build a central command center to manage the facility. This command center becomes much like the central nervous systems (data centers) where it can sense and respond. It can plan, predict and anticipate, as well as to balance and reconcile competing interests and demands placed on our buildings. The emphasis is on ensuring uptime, reliability, optimizing the environment to allow for an efficient and productive environment for all involved.

Extracting Value by deploying Smart Technology

To deliver smart infrastructure into buildings needs robust, reliable technology. It is through the combinations of utilizing advanced technology solutions that we obtain the intelligence from its digitalization. Smart Infrastructure of buildings have the solutions and the tools to do the job of managing energy, water, air, heating, cooling and security, movement and utilization that each building is expected to provide in its management.

To achieve what we need out of our working environment, we increasingly recognize the operating environment needs to be fully connected-up, to provide the service we need. As a building and equally city infrastructure become more intelligent, the benefits begin to be realized, not just for those working within the environment but for those investing in a property or infrastructure solutions, as giving both immediate impact and long-term value.

Infrastructure needs to be viewed differently than the past

Investments in infrastructure, like smart buildings, need to become more central to any vision of being smart within cities; through technology solutions that give us momentum towards sustainability and opportunity.

Being smart connects us as individuals into our place, it enables us to make a greater ‘productive’ contribution by being more aware of our environment. Future connected buildings help make us part of something intelligent, the places we live and work where we can shape and influence a better creative future in different ways. We move from being isolated to being part of a community.

Recognizing that intelligence is one increasingly based on information infrastructure, that is informing and delivering a different, more efficient environment through the solutions available or emerging is offering a different future to live and work within.

These are smart infrastructure solutions that are transforming our world.

The post Viewing our buildings differently for what they offer first appeared on Innovating the Energy Transition.

Energy networks are finally moving from century-old models were the power was flowing from centralized sources, based on the conventional generation of coal, oil and gas to the load centres and grids, based more on renewables.

Today and in the future, a new generation is spreading out across the energy networks, based on renewable sources of wind and solar and through innovative technology, into a more decentralized, distributed generation that the end-user can influence and control.

New solutions of Microgrids, energy storage solutions, and even the ability to localize renewable power is changing the energy supply business. In many ways, the end-user or final consumer is establishing control over their energy needs; they need to take out the volatility in energy supplies and build resilience into their system. They are looking for solutions that optimize their power demand, consumption, pricing, and overall management of their energy resources.

In a world increasingly reliant on data, on the use of digital devices, supporting distributed networks, and in our dependencies, on the internet, we rely on a high level of energy security. Outages can impact data centres, vital support services and any “break in service” is often costing millions in claims, bad-will, and lost business.

We all increasingly feeling this need to determine our energy destiny. We are entering a rechargeable world in our energy options, and energy storage is becoming central to this.

Two distinct and different markets for storage are emerging

The two markets are stationary storage and electric vehicles. Stationary storage is being deployed throughout the grid or can offer the utility the flexibility in scale for energy shifting (excess solar and wind generation). You can manage peak spike demand in power systems, and you can provide services that customers increasingly want, to store energy, and to be able to deploy this at their own energy demand needs.

A growing market of stationary storage solutions will be installed behind-the-meter by households and businesses. These are small-scale battery systems deployed alongside PV (rooftops), for example, where homeowners can improve installed payoffs for greater self-consumption, extracting more value than PV alone.

The other need for storage will be when E-mobility finally happens at scale, as this will need massive deployment of charging infrastructure- physical grid upgrades and stationary battery storage.

Presently, there is increased concern that power demand will exceed available grid capacity for E-mobility vehicle to grid. While energy networks continue to be upgraded, stationary battery storage becomes the best alternative option for flexibility and meeting demand at critical charging times.

Understanding the increasing value of storage

When you can store your energy, you can increase your capacity for stability and management within your designed energy system. Calling on installed storage gives you access to improved energy reliability, a higher level of efficiency in managing your energy-consuming assets, and ensure the sustainability of your business or environment. You become increasingly less dependent on others and can determine your energy mix and optimization.

Having greater control over your energy management allows you to control energy costs more effectively, you have critical power when needed, you can enhance existing energy designs and capabilities to enable you to extend your storage needs as and where they are required.

Energy battery storage is increasingly allowing storage options in their utility and flexibility. They are rapidly becoming the planner’s “go-to solution” as they give multiple options to manage energy.

Storage offers options for holding energy reserves, time-shifting, supply firming, system stability for each segment of consumer/ prosumer, decentralized generation, distributed grid options, variable generation solutions for wind and solar, transmission grid substitution, and conventional power support.

Mostly today and in the foreseeable future, Lithium-ion batteries make up most of today’s energy storage technology. Today, battery designs last two to four hours, but the energy and power density of Li-ion technologies continue to mature and scale for further capacity in the future.

We have increasing utility-scale battery storage capacity. Battery prices have been dropping, and they are reaching the point where renewables (wind and solar), combined with storage are becoming competitive with traditional energy sources powered by natural gas and become ideal to be switched on during times of high electricity demand

Energy Storage, paired with solar or wind, offers a real on-site value proposition.

Storage helps to integrate variable renewable energy resources (VRE). It is this combination of wind, solar, plus storage that is disrupting the commodity cycle in the future. It is this combination that allows companies to embrace clean, low-cost, renewable energy generation, replace or supplement existing baseload generation, hold and store this VRE for consistent energy use.

Storage also offers the essential and immediate back-up of power supply at times of catastrophic system failures, at the facility or within the grid. Resilience in energy is so critical; it gives growing security and storage solutions provide part of this stability.

Energy storage becomes an exciting business prospect

We are seeing a greater awakening of both corporate and end customers, who are recognizing that there are potential business opportunities as active energy buyers, seeking to play a more active role in the energy chain. Energy management is knowing how, when, and where energy is coming from and managing the patterns of consumption effectively.

The realization that by combining new energy technologies, such as the value of microgrids, having onsite solar or wind with software-enabled and data awareness, buyers recognize they have energy management in their hands.

Software helps better manage and visualize their power needs to the point that the local generation of energy can also offer potential excess for energy arbitrage where discharging electricity back to the grid provides a valuable new business model.

This ability to return energy is disrupting past conventional electricity generation, giving power energy options in the “hands” of the final consumer of energy.

Storage is changing the energy game.

Storage is a vital part of managing energy.  Storage helps satisfy instantaneous demand as it is helping to smooth out discrepancies between generation and load. Energy storage is well suited to provide such ancillary services.

Eventually, as costs continue to fall of storage, it could move beyond that role, providing more and more alternative options of energy solutions, allowing for a viable energy option on-site that you, as the consumer of electricity, can control.

Today Storage gives us all a very different perspective and range of options.

We see energy storage technologies’ performance is improving with new solutions and costs continually going down. Applying new applications, exploring new services and market opportunities gives confidence that storage options are increasingly safer and reliable to build into energy longer-tern solutions. We are seeing a rising competitive market where a dedicated storage focus is giving increased opportunities. The role of storage has been helped by the improvements in regulations; the more public-private collaborations are fueling the increased uptake on energy storage and uptake for providing real options and flexibility in design energy delivery and reliability.

All aspects of the energy system are benefiting.

Generation from emergency ‘black start,’ support to conventional generation, build distributed generation flexibility, and manage disturbances and curtailment issues in transmission, the frequency control, the ability to defer investment costs, and support infrastructure stability. In energy distribution, storage gives more dynamic voltage control, contingency options, smoothing out power quality, reducing upstream disturbances, and having reactive power compensation. Finally, at the consumption point, the end-user peak shaving, time-of-use, continuity of power supply, and power management closer to end-use continue to benefit from deploying storage solutions.

Recent estimates are predicting Energy Storage deployment will increase to the 7x factor over the next few years to build reliance and flexibility into the networks for energy security.

Storage certainly offers the potential to unlock your energy future.

• Updated on 26 Sept 2020

The post Storage unlocks the flexibility within our future energy needs first appeared on Innovating the Energy Transition.