In recent weeks I have been thinking about our business environment differently. The past few months have forced the majority of us to work in different ways. We have become in a very short time “remote workers.” in necessity and need.

Yet for many “newbies” in remote working, who have been working from home in these last few months, are now facing the decision of when and if they can return to their old normal of their office. It is a difficult decision and one that needs careful consideration and clarification of “how safe is this and what will have changed in my old working environment?”

Going back to the business office is undergoing such a radical shift due to the pandemic and all of what it has forced us to do; social distancing, being in lockdown, minimizing physical contact. The environment we work in is not simply a physical one, it has become a psychological one to manage as well.

During this week I was listening to one of a series of discussions or webinars about the massive changes being undergoing in a new reality in our business buildings. These helpful discussions instigated by Comfy called “thinking beyond workplace re-entry” was timely, and very relevant to trigger my thinking a little more.

We all need to feel reassured it is safe to return to our place of work expecting the place of work has suddenly changed to something radically different. One where we will be managed differently, working from home for days of a week and treating the office space as a place to not go every day but for collaborative and team situations and meetings needed to attend, but in radically different ways by keeping physical distance.

What was accepted as normal in the past for bringing people together in a common working environment is undergoing fundamental change, and this needs managing and optimizing differently.

You have to also wonder at this point in time has the future of work we have all understood was coming towards us is suddenly, in less than four months, actually arrived? Like anything new, it is often messy and needs our thinking to evolve to adjust to a new normal.

Firstly, our working environment is radically changing.

Whereas in the past, the management of properties was concerned with maximizing their occupancy yield, utilization, and the density of space by driving these upwards of 85% plus in productivity and efficiency methods, today, the whole need has changed.

The new paradigm is where these working environments are safe. The density of space has pivoted to “making space” and “providing trust” with the returning employee looking at two essential points of concern.

Firstly, will I feel safe in returning to work? Secondly, how can I navigate my space to keep social distancing and know the environment is safe.

Presently there is a need to manage space utilization and density down at safe levels of 30% to allow for social distancing and providing reassurance and trust that the working environment, post-Corona Virus, is a safe place to go back too.

The health and safety of employees have become paramount.

The new norm in building and office management and office is to keep to our own safe spaces, to minimize overcrowding and physical contact. To achieve this, employers and building management have been looking at developing different ways, guidelines, and policies to navigate this change of giving you “personal safe space”.

It is not simply a matter of “just turning up” anymore, it is turning up at the appropriate times that allow for a collaborative environment that is safe, secure, and well-managed on all the health and safety issues we are learning about due to the Corona Virus. Our place of work needs greater scheduling, be it at home or in our old office environment radically different

Today, the management of this change in working environments has extended well beyond one office, it has become one that needs to function in multiple places. These include our home or spaces where work can be undertaken, including your old office building and this, requires a robust technology solution.

We need to migrate our different technologies required in this “at a distance” world to enable us to stay connected, fully engaged, and highly collaborative, and maintain our productivity. We need different tools to have a way to communicate, to schedule, to plan, to attend or not, and that again needs a series of technology platforms.

The conversation I listened too triggered a load of thoughts for me

• Today our workspaces are not about “utilization and maximizing the density of space”, it is about safety, protecting the health of the employee, giving that right environment that they will be feeling safe.
• It is all about knowing that having my space being well and thoughtfully managed so I can feel comfortable and believe my office environment is a “healthy building” that supports my needs and concerns and keeps me safe and well.
• Each building has a lifecycle that needs constant management that connects with our needs in different ways- it becomes unique to each of us, and technology joins all of this up.
• Our buildings are dynamic and adjusting. Actually, the building is now needing to adjust to us, not the other way round.
• We still need to make a building intelligent so it all needs to be connected up. That takes time and as we move towards a new normal the essentials of connecting up a building will need to accelerate.
• The new standards of connected building performance are keeping “us” safe and secure but they still have to optimize to give a different “yield” of performance.
• If our utilization and occupancy readjust to only 30% density of floor occupancy what does that mean in rents, use, and a building’s economical future? That new uncertainty has yet to play out.
• The shift we are undergoing is the person entering the building needs to feel safe and secure. The data collected will be far more informing them of their environment than ever before.

We are entering a world of new smarter connecting possibilities

Having services that respond to demand, even perhaps anticipate your needs, react to changes, or provide an environment where monitoring is for your security and safety, one that can give you not just a feeling of belonging but a “peace of mind” to allow you to simply just get on with the work you need to do.

It has been argued that providing a  comfortable environment positively improves our cognitive abilities; it allows us to concentrate and problem-solve and builds that feeling that we can be more innovative. To bring back employees we need to make that environment as safe, secure, and personal to their needs.

Managing our buildings intelligently is on a radically different plain now

Much of the change is ahead. For instance, you begin to appreciate the value of having a fully connected building and technology solutions that will I am sure going to evolve rapidly by technology companies like Comfy.

The value of the single app gives all those involved in the working environment a comfort to be fully connected up to get on with their assigned jobs.

Having office solutions that connect your environment is yet another “accelerant” to a digitally transformed world, dramatically brought on by the pandemic where technology will continue to give us even more space and utility to perform in new ways.

It is amazing how a webinar can trigger your thinking so much

The post We all need to think differently about our connecting Work Spaces first appeared on Innovating the Energy Transition.

source of image: https://www.thegpsc.org/knowledge-sector/integrated-urban-planning

I strongly relate to Smart Cities or Smart Infrastructure as the grouping area within businesses, focusing on the Edge, delivering energy transmission to the final delivery point for residential, mobility or commercial needs.

There is so much potential in technology currently being invested in our cities and their infrastructures. There are many estimates of this investment, according to the McKinsey Global Institute, they estimated that cities around the world would need to double current infrastructure investments from $10 to $20 trillion annually, to build the necessary physical infrastructure to support growing populations and needs[1].

So often, the focus tends to be on physical or urban infrastructure, but the importance of social support needs equal attention.

To deliver the promise of digitally “smart” infrastructure does need the combination of physical and social infrastructure combining, to leverage all that can be made possible in innovative urban development, as this achieves the outcome of building a city open, inclusive, and delivering solutions to realize societal benefits.

The critical issue is achieving community engagement.

If we do not recognize the equal importance of social infrastructure, then we can face a potentially divided and polarised environment in which no amount of technology on its own can resolve. To make it inclusive, we need awareness and understanding.

This engagement needs to embrace all those that live in our smart cities of the future; the old, disabled, disenfranchised, homeless, vulnerable, marginalized, those rich or poor, all need to be broken down of the many “enclaves” we see today.

For a city’s citizens to value technology, they must relate to it, to appreciate it is contributing to their lives. Often this is referred to as a “quality of life” need.

The solutions for any contemporary urban city need to be engaging for all.

They need to unite communities; they need to provide a sense of identity where “advantage and benefit” are widely shared and seen but still value diversities that often make cities vibrant and attractive places to be living in.

The end solutions in cities should not only be “smart” but be intelligently applied

Citizen engagement is not just an end solution; it is an inclusive one from the very first moment any planning for change takes place. Cities will not engage communities if citizens feel you are disrupting, even destroying, long-standing relationships, and community spaces. Citizens need to relate and will ask: “what are the cost and disruptions, and will these be outweighed by the (eventual) benefits?”

City planners cannot make the mistake of offering binary choices of “accept or refuse,” they need to continually engage and communicate the value to the city, the cost to the citizen in “concrete” ways.

It is the partnership from inception that can bring citizen engagement and growing recognition that the changes, disruptive as they are initially, will bring economic and social benefits to their lives. It is articulating the case and giving it meaning and value.

Today we are providing outcomes of smart city investment.

The emphasis may be on City Smart solutions for infrastructure and systems, but increasingly citizen-centric smart solutions are as important; these give a greater connection and engagement. The provision of apps covering civic-engagement, digitalization of citizen services, bike and car sharing, smart parking, digital payments on public transport, private e-hailing, the arrival time of public transportation, and many others show tangible outcomes.

These solutions outlined above directly benefit the citizen; they can begin to appreciate the value of the investments made as ‘it’ relates to them. The more a citizen ‘sees,’ they will relate.

Smart city solutions are delivering real-time public transit info, road navigations apps, food ordering options, volunteering opportunities. Then as technology takes hold, we have the potential for the exceptional ability to share understanding, in health applications, water consumption, and electricity usage can be real-time in personal monitoring and control.

We can have greater control over home energy as the solutions connect into the utility providers and e-payment options. The end-user becomes a more active participant and influencer, getting more actively engaged in their consumption management.

The more significant benefits of the smart city are economical and social

For example, as cities improve their transport infrastructure, the critical aims are lowering congestion and pollution through more optimal use of technology. It is the ability to co-ordinate faster actions at times of emergency or in public safety threats through real-time analysis of sensor and surveillance cameras, better diagnostics, using artificial intelligence, and databases have high societal value for feeling safe and secure.

The ability to embed sensors and devices into the very fabric of commercial buildings, transport, homes, and factories, allows for putting a “smartness” through the data collected, monitored, and then analyzed to optimize those assets in there efficiency and effectiveness to more significant benefit.

Another level of engagement for citizens comes from a smart connected environment where they can search and find more dynamic groups of likeminded citizens to work together on collective interests. Citizens that they can help shape and form through a growing co-creation of decision making, digital democracy, and increase exchanges in a more participatory form of city governance.

As knowledge understanding forms the backbone of these engagements, the real potential of relating to data and information comes from the focused interventions that allow citizens to be more participatory in measuring the evidence of effectiveness, that openness will give all a growing sense of shared identity.

To deliver on this transformation to a “Smart City,” the promises need to provide tangible benefits or differences. Technology alone can make things better, but it is the combination with people that delivers the Smart payback. It is the marrying of both physical and social infrastructure into Smart Infrastructure as the central key, to engage communities, and connect citizens into any disruptive urban change.

Citizen engagement is essential to realize in our Smart Cities. A citizen who feels empowered determines so much of where their Smart City is going and what it means to them.

[1] Dobbs, Richard, et al., Urban World: Cities and the Rise of the Consuming Class, Report, McKinsey Global Institute, June

2012, https://www.mckinsey.com/global-themes/urbanization/urban-world-cities-and-the-rise-of-the-consuming-class

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Smart Grids are part of the Smart Infrastructure approach in our need for complete Urban Transitions currently being undertaken. Let me try to step back here and give some broader understanding of “smart grids”

Firstly there is a need and push to changing the Energy Systems we have installed to be more responsive, adaptable and flexible.

There is a considerable movement to a very different way of power consumption presently going on. A move that brings the end customer into the equation far more than in the past, through the development of Smart Energy Grids.

The electric power system is undergoing a radical transformation worldwide, firstly with the decarbonize electricity supply, in replacing aging assets and transforming control with new information and communication technologies (ICT).

A smart grid system is self-sufficient electricity network system based on digital automation technology for monitoring, control, and analysis within the supply chain, connected into the (national) grid. Being smart it is increasingly providing electrical power from multiple sources of energy, increasing renewable energy sources, including wind turbines, solar power systems, and biomass. Smart grid technology is to provide easy integration and reliable service to the consumers

The Smart Grid has opened Energy distribution up in radical ways.

The Smart Grid is presently being built, more from a bottom-up movement to handle today’s demands, driven by digitalization, where we are all becoming reliant on computerized equipment and technology, where energy is essential to be “on” at all times. Our world has become a connected one and energy keeps it “turned on.”

Transitioning from the past centralized energy grids into decentralized ones

The “grid” refers to the electric grid, a network of transmission lines, substations, transformers and more that deliver electricity from the power plant to your home or business. In the past, energy grids were all about utilities managing their infrastructure, protecting their assets and responding to any ‘outage’ as quickly as humanly possible.

The past way was to manage energy by a central generation source, that put in place the distributed system where consumers or customers were designated as ‘just’ a receiver of energy services, trapped often by one monopolistic provider.

Energy supply, through this non-participative dialogue, became a general expectancy that “you flip the switch” and supply would be instantly available. The problems with this one-way flow of energy management have been increasingly under pressure for some time.

Energy supply has been reliant on decade-old infrastructure approaches; it became over time a ‘patchwork’ network that always needed to keep being repaired, added to, or fixed, to keep it going. The concept of the energy grid needed modernizing as it was not keeping pace with the increased variance in demands.

Many energy grids today are becoming highly vulnerable, not just to manage increasingly sudden “peak demands” but was having to deal frequently with outages and emergencies from increasingly severe storms, earthquakes, and other natural disasters, as well as increased risk of terrorist or security attacks.

The shift  is towards “Smart Grids.”

To move towards a different energy grid, we needed a new kind of electric grid, known today as the “Smart Grid.”

What goes into a Smart Grid?

A smart grid works like the internet or your smartphone. It allows for two-way communication between the utility, through the energy ‘transmission structure’ to the customer. By having this grid digitally connected through the transmission structure, the technology and the equipment infrastructure works together to give a responsive environment to adapt changing electric demand, detect and minimize outage when equipment fails, or requirements alter.

Also, this is not a one-way “flow” as in the past from energy supply to customer. There is a whole new “distributed generation” where customer-owned or community-owned generators can produce their energy and contribute any excess generated back into the grid.

This dramatic change in the energy business model has opened the potential for “home-grown electricity” that complements and augments energy supplied through the primary grid. The ability to generate and sell back into the grid allows the customer to play an increasing part in optimizing the operating system and reducing their costs.

Exciting new solutions are emerging, three examples being:

Solutions are emerging to offer “zero-net-energy commercial buildings” that can balance energy generation and conservation through smart grid technology approaches.

We see the pioneering of energy storage through Smart Grid Technologies with thermal storage or hybrid air conditioning for influencing peak load demands, and we have the growing potential of lithium-ion batteries for PHEV applications.

The ability to improve on the sensors enables more power to flow over existing lines, and along with continued improvements in superconducting cables, there is potential to reduce losses and carry 3-5 times more power than traditional copper-based cable.

In summary, a smart grid can deliver a dramatically different energy environment

A smart grid employs innovative products and services together with intelligent monitoring, control, communication, and self-healing technologies to:

1. Better facilitate the connection and operation of generators of all sizes and technologies.
2. Allow consumers to play a part in optimizing the operation of the system.
3. Provide consumers with greater information and options for how they use their supply.
4. Significantly reduce the environmental impact of the whole electricity supply system.
5. Maintain or even improve the existing high levels of system reliability, quality, and security of supply.
6. Maintain and improve existing services efficiently.
7. Apply digital processing and communication across power grids
8. Allow data to flow and gives information management a more central role to make “energy smart.”

The Smart Grid comprises everything related to the electric system in between any point of generation and any point of consumption, so the grid becomes more flexible, responsive, and interactive and from this improves the system by providing real-time feedback that improves efficiencies and effectiveness.

Source of reference https://www.iec.ch/smartgrid/background/explained.htm>

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Smart solutions for resolving the demands placed in everyday events like traffic flows, energy, and water requirements, transportation utilization, or in managing energy peak demands or optimizing buildings.

Through digital understanding, you learn from what is in place to improve the future in designs, capability, and asset utilization through the use of intelligent data providing relevant insights.

A digital understanding can help predict many variances and assumptions, for example on load demands, on traffic flow, on shifting resources to balance the “system” for the immediate and future; all of these are based on the data collected and can be compared on the forecasts made.

To achieve this, you need a constant flow of ‘real-time’ data, not historical ‘lagging’ information, that is often out of date before you can evaluate it.

Modernizing the infrastructure

Smart infrastructure provides many of the solutions for the journey all cities must travel. 

Infrastructure for our cities needs a massive injection of new investment. These investments are not just in resolving many of the gaps of today’s infrastructure, but in the critical decision about deploying new technology and solutions, that build the future sustaining capacity, and these have significant long-term implications.

Cities have often outdated, antiquated yet critical infrastructure that has passed its ‘useful life’ in nearly all our cities. Regularly cities are patching these up to keep them functioning and going, yet for how long?  This legacy is in the equipment, within our buildings, transportation, different services, often essential services or necessary facilities, so they can still function properly. The cost of investing in the new or maintaining the old is a constant ongoing decision faced. Continually today, citizens are faced with the inevitable disruption of daily life, and that often lies in the breaking down of our infrastructure.

The challenges are significant in all that is needed to be tackled in cities. The decisions to be made on how we set about renovating existing infrastructure as this is often harder to solve than building the new. The value in extending the “useful commercial life” of a building or a highway is critical as we transverse to smart cities.

We need to ask continually is this a better sustaining “return” than investing in the new? The difficulties are not just when and where to invest, but in what solutions that are fit for future scaling out, to turn infrastructure into connected smart infrastructure. To help in this and many crucial decisions, it becomes essential to building out our intelligent, digitally reliant systems, for our future.

As we transition to smart cities, we need to explain all of what this means

Smart infrastructure investment will need a different dialogue to engage the citizen, as any radical pathway has its disruptive, challenging, and demanding periods to go through.

Just imagine reconciling the various stakeholders’ interests and what all of this might mean in their understanding of the impact on their lives future value and returns? Expectations are diverse, fragmented, and often resistant. We need better ways to communicate the needs and why the solutions offered are necessary and in the interests of all.

Offering solutions that are seemingly “dry” in understanding, just based only on digital and technology does need for a  different innovation model to be explained. It is not technology alone that are building the necessary physical houses, new hospitals or schools; it is projecting out a different view of the future where innovation has a crucial role to play that can provide a differentator seeking to improved quality of life.

We need to create and leave amply space for innovation to thrive

With increasing demands placed on a city’s infrastructure, there is a need for a  system change, one that will have a different cost/ impact relationship placed on us all. With so many critical issues to resolve in our infrastructure and cities, the potential returns from new inventions need a fresh impetus and restating. It involves the understanding of the value of future innovation and what this can bring.

Giving innovation enough space through technology can enable our solutions to move beyond just “smart” but to be designed to be highly adaptive and responsive ways, to resolve present-day problems. Ones that we can interlink the challenges, strengthen their dependence and offer solutions that benefit the citizen, to achieve a better quality of life, delivering a city ecosystem that connects and engages all to function well.

Innovation in the future holds the key to old and new alike; it delivers smart infrastructure solutions that can ‘break into’ many of our present problems to solve them and manage these more effectively through more intelligent insight, exploration, and actions.

Designing a roadmap of Smart Infrastructure Solutions

Cities around the world are expected to spend $41 trillion on smart city upgrades in the next 20 years; much of this will be through applying innovation in their designs. Large-scale infrastructure improvements projects are immense, they take years for completion, and these need financing and thinking through in a comprehensive manner.

A well thought through roadmap of solutions, based on sound and relevant information gives a much better chance to deliver the critical environment needed for reacting to the future. Cities can map out and visualize options and plan out future scenario’s using the data collected through having a digital smartness.

By providing a roadmap built on digital and technology understanding can help in different planning scenarios or options, ones that can predict sudden shocks or projecting response to various crises. Or modeling the flow of daily life in more informed, intelligent ways, gathered from the data of the city, that provides better planning and decision-making scope would offer a more dynamic and relevant realization of the need for future investments.

So much of our challenge today is to deliver improved solutions. These need to focus upon increased capacity; energy, mobility, water, sanitation, protection, health-related services, and this all requires critical information coming from connected data insights then explained to all stakeholders involved. To do this, a city planner or the elected officials need to manage the conversations in radically different ways, where engagement and inclusiveness are central for all; dialogues are consistent, frank and open, cohesive and constant, entirely understandable, and well explained.

As we prepare for the future, we do need to think differently

Smart infrastructure connects many parts of the city both physically and digitally. Services that capture the relevant information enable the deployment and introduction of the appropriate assets as the solutions. Smart solutions for resolving the demands placed in everyday events like traffic flows, energy, and water requirements,transportation utilization, or in managing energy peak demands or optimizing buildings.

The mission to make infrastructure intelligent is only at the beginning. Smart infrastructures provide the foundations to smart cities, to build and re-equip the physical assets deployed with their technology component.

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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.

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The Business Model Canvas by Alex Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur

We are witnessing a sweeping change being undertaken within the energy sector. The shifting away from traditional models of energy supply, based on one fuel, with limited or no choice for the ultimate consumer, has been our energy system for decades.

Today the energy dynamics of supply and demand are significantly changing. Monopolies are breaking down; be these in the single use of one fuel, in the past fossil fuel (oil, gas, coal) to generate the energy are now being challenged and progressively replaced with the cleaner, more friendly sustaining alternatives offered by solar, wind, water. These offer solutions to bringing down our carbon emissions but are far more dramatic in their impact on the energy systems we have in place.

New enabling technologies are opening us to new opportunities.

The balance between the supply side and the demand is dramatically shifting. The consumer suddenly has a choice and is exercising that in demanding their energy supply to be clean and friendly and expecting new pricing models to reflect their preferences and lifestyles, personalized to their needs. The final consumer is exercising control over their buying experience. The energy supply is becoming vital to them and aligned to the needs of contributing to the cleaning up of the environment, caused by the burning of fossil fuels.

The demands for cleaning up our environment, having clean energies, and choice have begun to disrupt existing structures within the energy system radically. The search is to undertake a radical change in energy sourcing, generating, transmission, and final distribution, and this is coming through the relationship of exploring enabling technologies and innovation, exploiting new energy sources, and making the energy system more reliable, responsive, and efficient.

New business models are suddenly being explored.

Different market designs are going through rapid experimentation, piloting, and scaling. New, more flexible pricing models to attract the consumer in their usage and engagement have created a customer relationship change and different pricing models, more towards subscription as a service one.

Possession has become more fluid; we are sharing assets more to extract more flexible pricing and energy supplies closer to the consumer; we are renting more assets that do a specific job. We see the emergence of the Grid Edge, where intelligent assets are deployed to track, optimize, integrate, and encourage energy usage and saving.

The evolution of business models across the Energy Value Chain

At the Fuel sourcing end, the transition from reliance on Fossil Fuels to having either a mix with renewables or the undertaking to a transition path that delivers power from renewables alone is one major transformation. The implication in different plants, sourcing, and planning is enormous.

The Generation Industry is needing to rethink their business models, ones that are fundamentally moving from a centrally grid-scaled model to a provider of grid services based on fuel source, the attention to higher reliability and cost mechanisms of in and output options

Transmission is moving from one way flows to managing complex power flows. More rerouting, switching, upgrade distribution grids to transmit, store, and become closer to the end market.

Distribution is rapidly moving from manual control to smaller distributed power facilities that provide flexibility for more local power management that integrates variable renewable sources and optimizes capacity supply and demand through power flows and digitally management services

Utilities are rapidly adapting to change from big electricity providers by directly selling power to large generation customers but learning how to aggregate, coordinate and offer different services closer to the customer’s end needs

The final consumer or prosumer are building or requiring their individual small energy systems so that they can optimize to their need and any surplus gets fed back into the grid when it is not needed, offsetting costs and can begin to consider community energy provider arrangements, so they become part of an aggregated system that builds storage into the energy supply mix to have more consistent, reliable flows and pricing.

The need is to explore and exploit new business opportunities

So many new business models are being explored with these changes, new contract arrangements, a different relation of supply of energy and customer. The delivery market will have strong middlemen acting as aggregators or specific delivery market operators that form a partnership with both ends participating,  of users and power generation providers. Different pricing models more based on bidding, personal contracts specific to one customer, different pay service arrangements

The time is right to explore new business models

Today with all the changes and options undertaken in the Energy Transition it is the time for designing and building new Business Models for Energy and knowing the value and aspects of the Business Model Canvas gives a sound point of exploring and experimenting on all the different options within the specific market designs available or planned.

It is well worth revisiting the two books of “Business Model Generation” and “Value Proposition Design,” written by Alex Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur. They can give you an outstanding clarity of building different business models for the significant changes being undertaken in the Energy Transition currently underway.

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Image credit @PerryGrone Unsplash

In the last few months, I have got increasingly nervous about where we are NOT going on climate change

The bush fires of Australia have been shocking, devastating, and crippling. They catalyze the concerns we all should have.

Each of us might or likely will face a shocking, devastating or crippling “event” in our lives in the next ten to twenty years. I feel it is inevitable, irrespective if we stopped all the debates and did the level of investment, we need to reverse the climate warming.

The next ten years of our investments in cutting emissions and refocusing our energy needs must go towards clean energy (renewables). Our ability to make a change will determine if these events recently will become the new norm, as our planet spins even more out of our ability to control climate-warming through greenhouse gases.

So I have to move through this shocking, devastating, and crippling effect but have I have begun to accept  the reality that our world is in a “state of climate alarm,” not just a “climate emergency.”

I have never before published one article on each of my three posting sites. This post I just had to. It is shaping me in how I look at innovation, collaboration, the power of networks, ecosystems and most of all, in our world of energy transition needed to reverse climate warming. So apologies if you see it on three separate sites but I don’t apologize for my real, underlying concern on where we are seemingly heading as a world.

So my emotions are swirling at the moment.

Shocking and devastating was the size, the velocity, and how the fires caught hold and devasted so much of parts of Australia in plant and animal life as well as the human cost and tragedies. As you read of one fire breaking out after another, you became “in awe” of the firefighters. Lacking decent equipment to fight this scale of the fires, they showed all the “Australia pluck and fortitude” they are known for. What a battle. With the intervention of some significant rains recently most, if not all of the blazes seem to have been extinguished; thankfully

Crippling has been the debate since then, and it is only just started. Australia is caught in the middle of the global and country debate on coal. Our need for it versus the need to stop using it. Asia is so reliant; at present, on coal for its energy, we are caught in a real problem.

Energy security is for everyone, irrespective, but while we have this Asian dependence on coal, we are going to struggle very hard with combating climate warming. The carbon emissions from coal are our equivalent “runaway train.” It needs stopping before the damage is beyond repair to our global planet.

Each time I return to the Australian bushfires, and all this means for them and us, I keep wondering is this the “crippling” debate we are going to have in all parts of the world? Can we afford this? The political pressures for coal to be still central to Australia’s thinking is simply staggering.

Then I heard the comment “politics, economics and climate” and the different perspectives.

Another alarm bell suddenly went off for me. I was listening to a podcast by Giles Parkinson and David Leitch “There is no new normal in climate change” (listen to the first 5 minutes if nothing else) introduced me to David’s “its the difference politics, economics, and climate.” Actually, that sums up nearly each “debate” I am reading, engaged in or listening too in recent months. It is politics, economics, and climate differences are today’s debate.

How much longer can we afford to wrangle over these? Saving our climate should be in most if not all our debates and decisions, politics and economics need to get behind, otherwise, they grow in size and scale.

Can we be so much nearer to some (horrific) tipping points?

In the last few days, I have also been reading on the nine different “tipping points” going on. This is an article from Carbon Brief on their “explainer of the nine tipping points that could be triggered by climate change”.

“ Imagine a child pushing themselves from the top of a playground slide. There is a point beyond which it is too late for the child to stop themselves sliding down. Pass this threshold, and the child continues inevitably towards a different state – at the bottom of the slide rather than the top.”

“The persistent march of a warming climate is seen across a multitude of continuous, incremental changes. CO2 levels in the atmosphere. Ocean heat content. Global sea-level rise. Each creeps up year after year, fuelled by human-caused greenhouse gas emissions.”

Passing an irreversible tipping point would mean a system would not revert to its original state even if the forcing lessens or reverses, explains Dr. Richard Wood, who leads the Climate, Cryosphere and Oceans group in the Met Office Hadley Centre.

This leads me to an article by Bob Watson. Does it seemingly get worse- oh, yes? In Bob’s “Nature is being eroded at rates unprecedented in human history, but we still have time to stave off mass extinctions.”

He states, “We have all assumed that nature would always be here for us and our children. However, our boundless consumption, shortsighted reliance on fossil fuels and our unsustainable use of nature now seriously threaten our future.

Environmentalists, scientists, and indigenous peoples have been sounding the alarm for decades. Our understanding of the overexploitation of the planet has advanced with grim, sharp clarity over that time.

We have entered an era of rapidly accelerating species extinction, and are facing the irreversible loss of plant and animal species, habitats and vital crops, while coming face to face with the horrific impacts of global climate change”.

Now I do not want to get into a bragging right position, but I have known Bob Watson since our teens. I stand in “awe” of him and all he has achieved in the years. He is now Sir Robert Watson and has been chair of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), and former chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He has influenced my thinking a lot on all of what matters on climate. How he crystalizes the issues is impressive whenever I have bumped into him or in what I read.

The other part of my past few weeks has been the “sense” the climate debate is shifting.

The message is we must take action”. It needs to be decisive and immediate as it is vital.

We need nature conservation and energy change.

In an article written in May 2019, John Vidal, a former Guardian environmental editor he wrote: “Has the politics of climate change finally reached a tipping point?”

This extracted from the article sums up our need to address and resolve:

“Weaning ourselves off fossil fuels would clear up air pollution rapidly and save billions of pounds a year that the NHS must currently spend dealing with heart attacks, asthma, strokes, and respiratory illnesses. Cities would become more liveable, the countryside more attractive. Instead of being regarded by the government as a costly imposition, action on climate and nature regeneration could be easily recast as visionary politics offering huge public benefits.

But what happens when the voluntary measures run out and the warming is not seen to slow because greenhouse gases are so long-lasting? Really addressing climate and biodiversity collapse means rationing carbon. It means no more free ride for extractive industries such as mining, palm oil and forestry companies who profit from environmental destruction. It means heavy penalties for polluters, the axing of food and aviation subsidies, and taking a torch to vested interests. It means addressing the indirect causes of the crisis, such as population growth and consumerism, even rethinking the whole idea of progress and wealth.”

We are facing a crucial point in time; this decade is our last stand

How do you put together and explain the devastating effects of the Bush fires of Australia and put them into the context of where we live and what climate change will mean for each and every one of us? It is floods, crop failures, deteriorating air, fires, global epidemics, loss of habitat, loss of jobs as we increasingly live in a world of dealing with disruption and dislocation.

“What we’re seeing are the effects of climate change. Sometimes, it’s said that Australia is the canary in the coal mine with the effects of climate change being seen here most severely and earliest… We’re probably looking at what climate change may look like for other parts of the world in the first stages in Australia at the moment,” said Professor Dickman from the Faculty of Science.based in Australia.

If this comment is the reality then what this really will mean in any global action on climate, what will happen if we do pass a tipping point, how much more can we afford to lose in nature, in plants, in animals in our air we breathe before we face something that becomes “catastrophic”?

Do we have any alternatives? Is this too dark for you?

I come back to what made me sit up and realize. Today’s evaluation of anything we do is going to be based on “Politics, Economics and Climate” in what it costs, what it means, and its impact on us.

Which one dominates the others is not the issue; it is we need to make sure all three are of equal importance, yet we need to recognize climate action ‘determines’ the other two in bringing global warming under control. We have nowhere to hid in decades to come and if we do, it is only going to get a whole lot hotter.

I close by quoting Bob Watson “As policymakers around the world grapple with the twin threats of climate change and biodiversity loss, it is essential that they understand the linkages between the two so that their decisions and actions address both.

The world needs to recognize that loss of biodiversity and human-induced climate change are not only environmental issues but development, economic, social, security, equity, and moral issues as well. The future of humanity depends on action now. If we do not act, our children and all future generations will never forgive us.”

The post Economics, Politics and Climate need to come together. first appeared on Innovating the Energy Transition.

Infrastructure enables people and what they need, so as to function and thrive, to provide the structures to get them from place to place, to provide sustaining residence and prospects.

If we make this infrastructure “smart,” what will that give us?

“Smart” as a concept is not just supplying the connectivity but also delivering the sense-making capability from what it offers, through the data provided. We can model, use big data analytics, apply analysis and data mine, to make this set of connections, to improve our intelligence.

As we build the smart infrastructure, we are developing intelligent infrastructure; where we learn, improve decisions, and advance our abilities to connect and improve the essential functions that infrastructure offers. ‘Smart’ can potentially connect all the parts of the city.

Infrastructure sets about to provide all these essentials to allow us to function and have a higher chance of growing in our ways of living. We not only recognize that infrastructure is the “hard” physical asset we can touch; it is also integral to the “softer” aspects, places where we can enjoy community spaces, parks and meeting areas, where we can connect and share.

Infrastructure provides the environment for us to give new ‘form and function’ as it offers a digital component that provides us with knowledge and understanding, to improve on what is already in place.

The connections within infrastructure today are making us smarter.

We are fusing the physical with the digital to create Smart Infrastructure. Smartness is not just installing digital and physical interfaces; it is about how we set about to understand and use it in data and yield.

The digital infrastructure is made up of what we own or have placed around us. In the use of our devices, in the “apps” we can use and the use of multiple sensors that are embedded in the physical assets all around us, we can feed networks with “raw data” connected up into the internet of things (IoT). This data we are sharing is becoming smarter by all these connections by the information it is providing. The better the platform and the analytics, we can explore the potential value to improve on what we have and build into new smart infrastructure solutions.

Our transport, energy, water, telecommunications, and waste infrastructures are under increasing strain to cope with the continued influx of more people moving to the city. At current estimates, 68% of the global population by 2025 will be living in a city. The Infrastructure within Cities has a significant job to cope with this sort of influx. Connecting up the usage, the flows, and physical movements through having that data will enable planning to be closer to real-time and be “modeled” to smooth out peaks and improve the reliability and service.

Managing all that is old and aged, we need to fuse it with the new

Many of our cities today have aging infrastructure, showing chronic problems of breaking down. Many of our existing buildings were constructed years ago, even centuries ago and lacked the levels of sustained investment they needed.

Today we are facing up to this lack of continuous investment. We will continue to build new assets, but it is the extension of existing infrastructure assets that need increased attention so they can be updated and connected.

We need to push designs to increase the value more out of the current operating asset base as so often they can’t be replaced as many of our buildings offer a real legacy and identification with a specific city, that has become iconic or just essential.

Smart technologies can help us monitor conditions, make us more aware by anticipating when an item needs servicing or maintenance, focusing more on preventing failure. Data, provided through new technology like sensors on equipment deployed can collect, inform and manage demand, their peaks and surges to offer a new “lease of life” to existing assets by managing them more thoughtfully.

Today we can design solutions within any new infrastructure through having a “digital twin” so they are better planned, conceptualized, and designed, more “upfront,” before they are even built and then used to make scenario’s of “what if?” and explore concepts that build on the existing infrastructure to see how they integrate and function.

We are exploring new ideas through innovation and technology solutions that are helping us to extend and improve our environments and benefit all existing and future infrastructures. Technology is opening our minds and our cities, to new possibilities and opportunities, far more difficult without becoming a connected ‘smart’ city.

We are becoming better informed about the city’s performance and that is good for those living and working in the city as it can offer improvements to improve our lives.

The Expected Value of Smart Infrastructure

Smart infrastructure can significantly improve intelligence from all parts of a city. Data can improve decisions in real-time, in the daily life of a city and help form the digital backbone to plan out the future based on this collected, dynamic data. We can predict, take action, and manage in “real-time” from the flow of data and how we visualize the movement of people, goods and essential services.

As we enhance both our physical and digital understanding of smart infrastructure, we achieve increasing value. We are consciously building value into our infrastructure, in customer or citizen awareness and appreciation, in informing value on where it makes the connections and increases the integration, for all involved in city life to make their own “smarter” decisions.

The knowledge comes in knowing about traffic, air quality, where repairs or events can disrupt our daily routine, or prove us tools to plan accordingly and save us time and lost productivity. Having these insights makes us more aware and ready to anticipate and take proactive action

This value can build each time we invest in the infrastructure process and design in its use, operations, maintenance, planning, and feasibility. We can achieve the increased realization of design and execution from technology, in any assembly or building, in logistics or movements, and through a greater understanding of changes in materials used in smart infrastructure designs, in the manufacture and application into intelligent solutions. Technology and innovation are pushing out the boundaries of Smart Infrastructure.

Smart Infrastructure raises expectations as it can provide us growing intelligence and reliability

Smart Infrastructure is a rapidly growing new industry, requiring new skills and replacing old ones. Estimates suggest we have $50 trillion of mature infrastructure to be retrofitted in the coming years.

A citizen expects the essential services from our infrastructure, like consistent energy and water to connect their homes and businesses. The infrastructure gives us the physical assets as well as the digital backbone of communications, so distance and connections are not barriers anymore to “conduct and undergo” our daily lives.  Those living in our cities expect the solutions offered will deliver on the promise of better outcomes and a better quality of life for them as citizens.

Smart infrastructure can offer our cities so much. Smart Infrastructure brings together many of the connections we need to improve the functioning of a city, of the assets or physical infrastructure that is necessary to provide us the services we expect and allow us to function economically, effectively and increasingly in a connected society, that is increasingly dependent on each other.

As our understanding grows on how to build sustaining cities, there are so many future possibilities known or still to be discovered. Embracing  Smart Infrastructure can create a more reliable and sustainable place to work and live in, one that allows us more moments to enjoy our precious time they way we want too.

The post What lies at the core of Smart Infrastructure is connectivity. first appeared on Innovating the Energy Transition.

Each of the barriers to achieving a Smart Infrastructure that is outlined below will be hard in its own right to resolve but all of these will need tackling to provide the momentum we need

Addressing these fifteen issues lies the resolution we need to have, to overcome many of the barriers to Smart Infrastructure. Within these ‘barriers’ I offer some initial suggestions on solutions that can help in overcoming or resolving them

• Technology- with its consistent change, cities have the risk of buying something not thoroughly tested in a sustaining environment. If technology is not fully proven, this creates uncertainty in decisions that are highly difficult to make, primarily where infrastructure may involve a ten to twenty years before it comes on stream. Part of our solution is to overcome this with a far more a collaborative mindset from multiple organizations across all stakeholders; public, private, investors and citizens, to determine best available options to make decisions, having open and full access to data, results, and clarity of what issues have occurred from installations to date.

• High Investments – How do we bring down the cost of smart infrastructure in different, imaginative ways? The immense financial pressures faced by authorities require joint public-private investment. A collaborative solution is required so as to have financial institutions that look for joint collaborate investments that have as the clear intent to innovate, and build the investing ecosystem, where any cost curve show increasing attraction and social and economic return, due to scale and growing adoption by those involved in the infrastructure solutions, seeing the benefit.

• Truth vs. Hype –So much of technology is often over-hyped, so can we trust what is often claimed? How can we separate the realities when each city has a unique vision or different set of priorities and timescales, for its needs, does the solution fit the need?? Reflecting a “reality” requires an equal understanding of technology-related solutions, their limitations, constraints, and their possibilities, and then at what cost compared to perhaps some imaginative alternatives? Future solutions need to be more open, so decision-makers getting access to all possible options? Are business cases well documented in the detail necessary? We need a smart infrastructure clearinghouse of proven or emerging technology and what it can really deliver.

• Interoperability of things – Infrastructure has so many different systems talking to each other, how can we bring all key systems components together in one central management command and decision center based on a platform approach? Managing smart infrastructures that are collaborative, built on ecosystem principles and based on robust, connected platform solutions, needs greater transparency and validations so investments are made with increased confidence of seeing clear returns

• The need is having a clear story of “building the Use Case” for all stakeholders worked out. This justification is especially essential for a citizen to relate too; they need engagement and increasing dialogue mechanisms that make citizen participation and inclusion very central. We often forget the use case is not just for the buyer but the end customer as they need to buy-in as much.

• Privacy and security – How do we address concerns over personal data privacy and security as smart systems become more pervasive? Today councils, businesses, and all involved parties struggle to understand the value and benefits of the data they can generate, the business case to collect citizens’ data and securely manage it. Privacy and security requires a ‘citizen chart of trust’ built on a highly advanced security system to protect this data and the party who provides this, will gain from the investment

• Resilience – How vulnerable are our cities, what becomes critical to reinforce, to make more robust and build out as more resilient, making the investments part of a conscious set of transitioning ones, bridging today’s needs towards sustainable solutions within the solutions for new smart city ecosystems? Are resilient city systems, both reactive and shockproof? Resilience should always be thoroughly tested as part of any new smart infrastructure investment.

• Sustainability- are our decisions today the right ones to lead to more sustainable solutions? The more we can plan a city’s future on “their” data and forecasts, the more you can evolve on a sustaining, progressive plan. Modeling a virtual smart city that is a “digital twin” of the real city, allows for a real-life simulation of building out the future. The investment in having a digital twin of your assets allows for multiple options to validate, test and explore options and have the “safe” environment to build out your actual assets based on the digital twin.

• Cities have limited influence over many essential services. They equally continue to have difficulties in working across departments and boundaries. Utilities are usually in private hands. Sometimes city management often remains remote and defensive. How can we tackle the need to open up systems where the more you exchange, the more you can benefit in exchanges of knowledge? Today with the concepts of platforms and ecosystem design, Smart Infrastructure can become more “open smart infrastructure” to help break down these barriers and silos, it can progressively build the roadmap, identify the ‘players’ and engage in conversation that allows for mutual solutions to be found for all concerned.

• It is turning “Smart” rhetoric into reality for all concerned to understand what this means. Any smart future is dependent on people, technology, and data coming together and being committed and engaged in the solutions these might offer. Today citizens still don’t know what a smart city or what “smart” means in infrastructure solutions, or even the benefits it can bring. Today the concept of a smart city still seems worrying, and citizens continue to ask is technology going to solve our daily problems? By providing access to reliable and trusted knowledgable resources, dialogues and information will help educate all involved. We need to focus continuously on a clear narrative of what a “smart” city is going to provide, in benefits that the beneficiary can understand.

• To raise consumer awareness or citizen engagement needs investment. Will it save citizens time, money, and provide peace of mind? Does it offer clear and obvious benefits to daily lives? Will citizens relate to smart infrastructure implementation as they see the value and be prepared to contribute more through taxes? The need is to connect the “smart” story to the emotive needs of the citizen, is simply paramount, otherwise implementing technology or solutions not understood becomes a very frustrating exercise, blocked by public concerns. Smart is engaging the citizen constantly and in multiple ways. It is time-consuming but essential.

• To invest in Smart Infrastructure needs a Smart vision. Technology developments will be continuing to evolve. The innovation pipeline will require a level of collaborative participation, as experimentation, scaling up and full-scale innovations that “add” to a city or its infrastructure will need a more collaborative model. Game-changing technologies and harnessing the potential will require different models of design. We come back to collaborating, innovating and investing will be more in partnership but it is constantly providing this vision and linking it to value, benefit and return that makes any new design compelling.

• Smart Infrastructure Business Models – Cities are recognizing the need to build more sustainable business models that show clear value propositions, by clarifying who benefits, what are the cost and returns and, what is the impact these will have. A Smart Infrastructure Validation model designed and conceived, similar to the Business Model Canvas, on its ability to articulate the full proposition, would be useful to outline the impact of disruptive technologies and what radically different solutions will provide within a Smart City?

• Innovation and Invention– recognizing that innovation and inventions are continually evolving; we need to build out the necessary space to factor this into our future thinking. Often it is hard to choose the right solutions. This demands a constant awareness of technologies, materials, solutions, alternatives as they evolve to be considered and evaluated. Having access to a register of breaking technologies, of accessing new designs, not only aids the city planner, it speeds up the identification of all the stakeholders and the eventual decision-making process. To look towards the leading Smart Infrastructure advisors and ‘Smart’ solution providers will help partly bridge that knowledge gap and allow for greater collaborative exchanges for knowledge building..

• Finding attractive funding models – With cities and local authorities often highly cash strapped, the sacrifice of the long-term to service the immediate will be a constant dilemma. Imaginative partnerships between stakeholders need further exploration and validation. Raising awareness, matching public and private funds will require exploring. Collaborations with research institutions, private and public sectors will need to find the right platform for engagement. We need to develop those centers of expertise and financial modeling that are “energy transition” rated.

Cities cannot tackle these issues in isolation; they should only commit to this in an ecosystem of partnerships. These include investors, other cities, research and institutions, financial investors, central Government and public funding, with a variety of private companies coming together in a constellation, with the citizen being clearly at the center in dialogue, informing and in educating them on ‘why’ the smart future is the way forward.

There are many roadblocks for smart Infrastructure to overcome. Is this a prize worth going for? At the heart of this, if cities are going to embrace and invest in a connected smart city, it will require a deep sustaining commitment, overcoming many barriers to progress.

Translating a smart vision into a workable set of solutions for cities and infrastructure is hard, demanding work. There are arguably many different positions on the value of building ‘smart’ into our infrastructure.

What one needs is leadership, not just in technology solutions but in understanding and building a holistic understanding of “smart Infrastructure” and all the needs to reduce so many current barriers and impediments as today, there is far too much-siloed thinking of only thinking about my contribution.

We need “big picture thinking to gain the growth and impact Smart Infrastructure designs can bring in collaborations

The post Tackling the Barriers to Smart Infrastructure? first appeared on Innovating the Energy Transition.

Image credit Paweł Czerwiński
@pawel_czerwinski via Unsplash

Energy is in a massive state of change, truly global in its transition. There is a power sector transformation going on, towards a low-carbon, reliable, affordable and secure energy system.

The need is to manage the transition from the old, more reliant on fossil fuels (gas, oil, coal) into the renewables /wind, solar, hydropower, geothermal and biomass). Turning to innovation in new solutions is making this all possible.

For me, the interesting thing is that innovation is the engine powering the energy transformation and that the pace of discovery, exploration, and solution is beginning to happen at a rapid rate of demand-driven need. As someone engaged in innovation, the energy transformation story is getting really exciting.

You sense the future is changing, gaining unstoppable momentum. The difficulty for us all is this sort of transformation is at such a scale of complexity, rapid pace and variability; it is highly complex to relate too.

Here I am wanting to focus on one part of the energy transition taking place; solutions that are unlocking the energy systems flexibility.

Key changes happening to give us new flexible energy options:

Generation. The present large inflexible thermal generation is being replaced by renewable generation. The hard part is these renewables are weather dependent, so the innovation solutions need to become more flexible, deliver faster ramping up capacity to react to increasing volatility of net load occurring far more.

Sector coupling /demand. As the shift continues to electrification at the end-user continues the load on the distribution networks will increase. It is the ability to bring the sources of power together; it’s about the integration of the energy system in other sectors so that it can be inherently flexible. (The technical term for this is sector coupling.) This smooth’s out the demand patterns and aims to optimize the distribution grid.

Energy Storage. Battery technologies have been a massive set of innovation breakthroughs in recent years. The prices have fallen, and we have seen the consumer are installing batteries at a scale to maximize their solar PV system has become energy players. Distribution grid operators are turning to mid-scale batteries to avoid network upgrades, and finally, the power-to-x application that is supporting sector coupling (power-to-heat and power-to-hydrogen) are emerging offering the potential to store energy in different forms

Distribution grids. The ability to predict the load and provide the capacity to balance supply and demand has given rise to different distribution system operators, opportunities to change the regulatory frameworks and give rise to specialized grid stability management. The expansion of power grids and intelligent grid management are critical here because everything is becoming connected to manage energy differently than in the past. It is rapidly decentralizing control

Aggregation / demand response. With greater investment in technology, to some degree, this is driving different market design and business models within the system operations, all further innovation within the energy system. More active energy users, called prosumers as they both consume and produce energy are challenging the dynamics of the sector. They can unlock the potential for more demand-sided flexibility. A real innovator’s business model change opportunity space.

Renewables within the Energy Systems require significant innovation

Part of the energy drive in innovation activity is for integrating high shares of variable renewable energy (VRE) into power systems by the focus on increasing flexibility in the system while reducing the costs of system operation. The flexibility of a power system, the extent to which the system can adapt the pattern of electricity generation and consumption to keep supply and demand in constant balance is directly related to its ability to accommodate VRE generation at the lowest possible cost.

Innovation is at the heart of the energy transition.

It is driven to achieve a cost-effective global transformation that results in low-carbon, sustainable, reliable and inclusive energy systems with the emphasis on emerging flexible solutions that changes the energy equation.

Innovation is enabling technologies, offering new business models, market design and system integration options in focusing on flexible solutions to overcome solar and wind variability, provide increased system flexibility and allowing for reduced total system cost. Innovation is playing a significant role in facilitating the integration of the emerging new renewable energy system providing new opportunities to explore and evolve:

1).  For new business models, where new services, enhancing the system’s flexibility and providing the incentivizing of further integration models can play there part.

2). Then we have the consequence of any innovation change, in energy source and deliver, and that is in market design innovation. Regulations, policies, new incentives for value-adding services are building new business opportunities, that give a new breed of energy players, including a new set of infrastructure investors opportunities to support and gain from.

3). Lastly, the innovating models for operating in the electricity system can give a different way to share the value out of managing this VRE generation and it opens up the market to a whole new range of energy providers, including, you as a net contributor back to the energy grid with the right approach to usage, storage, and generation from your renewable technology stack of solutions.

Innovation solutions are both supply-sided and demand-sided

Innovation is working on both the supply-side in finding the new flexible solution but on the demand-side as well.

The Grid is offering a growing range of flexible solutions to reduce the dependencies on large centralized grids to closer to final demand, match closer generation and variable demands, provide increased flexibility in storage and new grid operations and provide solutions that interconnect the systems to be more flexible.

Storage through advancing battery-scale solutions and the power-to-x solutions is also offering a completely different range of options for demand-side management, optimization distribution closer to the markets and the ability to aggregate distributed energy resources to match and design the grid services for giving the need consumer that flexibility by taking out the variability of renewables.

Innovation has the power to unlock the Energy Transition

The energy shifts undergoing in the energy transitions today are allowing real innovation opportunities when you survey the innovation landscape. There is complexity in all the energy transitions going on, but it is the ones that can see the possibilities and ‘energize’ the innovation solutions hold the future in their hands. All we can predict; the pace of innovation and energy transition will scale up to meet the needs of a world rapidly wanting to decarbonize and the innovator is in a very healthy position to capitalize on this

The post Placing context into the Energy Transition-part two first appeared on Innovating the Energy Transition.