By Jon Arnold and Larry Cochrane, Microsoft
The face of generation is changing. Although no one can predict what will happen 10 or 15 years into the future, today’s technology, carbon and environmental sustainability assumptions help us visualize a very different energy supply ecosystem. The traditional role of utilities providing reliability services and acting as provider of last resort will be challenged by new business pressures and the complexities of the new marketplace. It will be an environment where energy supply and delivery morph into a multi-faceted network where traditional lines of demarcation are disaggregated into a dynamic energy ecosystem.
Why is this the case? Simply put, what the industry is doing today will not work tomorrow. Although smart metering and demand response will help, they simply aren’t enough. We need to think differently and embrace power generation—including distributed generation of renewables—as part of the grid response solution.
The industry is entering an unprecedented era, one rich with innovation around energy-producing equipment and active participation from consumers in the overall energy ecosystem. The era will see new solutions such as renewables, energy storage and demand response that will radically change the way we think about power systems.
In this new era, solutions to maintain the grid will range from the smallest sensor for measuring and exposing energy use and carbon footprints to high-performance streaming complex event processing. To control the growing number of devices, grid solutions will need the capability to handle Internet-scale data acquisition. They will also need the scale to handle large, complex, real-time hierarchical network reliability solutions, as well as massive data storage and analysis. All of that said, flexibility is critical because distributed generation or demand response that will work in one area may not work in another, displacing today’s radial, homogenous paradigm.
The examples that support this transformation are numerous.
Utility energy management systems must boost capacity from 30 or 40 generators to 10 to 20 million generation sources, all asynchronously participating in grid behavior. At the same time, some retail providers will establish local microgrids with distributed generation to maintain stability at the local level without depending on centralized energy management systems.
However, power companies cannot use energy management software designed for 40 generation sources to solve a power flow and also build security-constrained economic dispatch for 20 million generation sources all running on a two-second basis. Although one can drive controls out to 40 generating units every two seconds, it’s much more difficult to issue closed-loop control commands to 20 million generation sources and verify the generators are following the commands. In the event of demand response, the number may mushroom to as many as 200 million devices.
There are also indications that some utilities will reinvent themselves as reliability providers, enabling retail and wholesale energy wheeling through their wires. But, existing relay protection schemes were designed for radial flow from a central source, so utilities cannot rely upon them for bi-directional flows in distribution wires. Also, using superconducting cables to build mesh connections would be prohibitively expensive. In fact, the industry will likely move from transmission system congestion caused by grid stability and thermal limitations to distribution system congestion where the industry will need the ability to curtail local generation, such as solar, to protect distribution wire assets.
Companies can use synchrophasors to help measure the grid system’s health, but if they run the network at its reliability limit, they will need new equipment and new techniques to make the grid more agile and resilient. Synchrophasors may get us closer to the grid limit, but they will not eliminate outages when demand outstrips supply.
If that’s not enough, when energy ecosystem participants adopt new business models such as plug-in hybrid electric vehicles for charging and storage, they cannot use existing customer information and billing systems to maintain financial settlement for mobile connectivity.
Utilities will need new solutions based upon a smart, dynamic, integrated technology infrastructure that spans the utility value chain from fuels to the home. This flexible infrastructure must scale broadly to Internet-class systems and provide computing horsepower and storage not yet seen in the industry. It must incorporate advanced security patch and vulnerability management strategies to protect the integrity of these highly connected systems.
Software with new levels of computing capability and techniques will be an integral part of the future’s smart energy ecosystem. This software will be deeply entrenched in the lines of business, managing networks and power flow as well as grids and billing systems. Software-plus services, the combination of newer “cloud-based” services with on-premise computing, will likely be the foundation for the next generation of utility systems, targeting the new smart energy ecosystem. As a result employees, companies and consumers will be able to adapt to changing and often unexpected requirements.
Energy issues represent a challenging and complex societal problem that will take years and collaboration across all constituents in the industry to address. As new participants join the smart energy ecosystem, utilities still must maintain—and improve—grid reliability. The innovation exists to do this, and the future, energized by a smart energy ecosystem, looks bright.
Authors: Jon Arnold is managing director and Larry Cochrane is technology strategist for Microsoft’s Worldwide Utilities team.