Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2023. Read them in this 15th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
Digitalization and End Users Will Drive New Technologies for the Energy Transition in the Coming Year
By
Dr. Shuli Goodman, Executive Director, LF Energy Foundation
The challenge of addressing climate change has
become greater in the face of major global events in 2022. It is becoming
unlikely that we will be able to keep warming below 1.5℃ to meet the goals of
the Paris Agreement, yet we still must complete a full transformation of energy
systems to avoid the worst outcomes of climate change. 2023 will be the year
that the energy sector fully realizes that proprietary technologies with vendor
lock-in and closed off data warehouses will never enable us to avoid the worst
outcomes of climate change.
Let's start by discussing some of the
challenges we are facing to build the technology needed to complete the energy
transition. Legacy power systems are almost completely proprietary with
insufficient interoperability creating a tremendous amount of technical debt.
The industry is only beginning to understand that the status quo is not
sustainable, and implementation of a new technology stack is needed if we will
ever achieve decarbonization targets. This is especially true as the industry
grapples with additional challenges that will arise from the growth in adoption
of renewables and distributed energy resources (DER). 2023 will be the year
when the industry finally comes to understand this and that the only way to fix
it is to develop solutions collaboratively through an open source model.
The most efficient way to address these
challenges and drive the energy transition forward is through a cloud and
microservices approach using a base layer of VMs and a real time Linux
distribution built for power systems that can enable microservices to scale
quickly and efficiently. The shift to renewable energy is creating an immense
challenge in how to keep loads balanced throughout the day and night in light
of varying weather patterns and changes in usage due to higher demand that will
come from the electrification of mobility like more electric vehicles.
DERs are small-scale power generation systems
that are housed with consumers or business end users in addition to electrical
utilities leveraging scalable renewable sources. Think solar panels on a house
or a battery backup system. Rather than the traditional solutions of a utility
spinning up a fossil fuel plant to fill the gap and balance the loads, moving
forward utilities will be able to pull from DERs - whether owned by them or a
business or individual household - to manage this in a less carbon-intensive
manner. This means utilities will have to treat some of their current end users
also as suppliers, which is a major change for folks on both sides of the
equation. Building technology that enables bidirectional energy transmission
and works with whatever equipment the utility and the end user are using will
be essential, and is something LF Energy is working on with our various members
and wider open source community.
While traditional energy infrastructure has
not focused on end users beyond ensuring they have access to power, achieving
optimal load balancing and substantially reducing carbon emissions will require
their involvement. Another challenge of this new type of energy grid is
metering and measurement. The current generation of smart meters deployed in
the US have not met their initial promise, which was to give individuals more
insight and control into their power usage. All they have really accomplished
is eliminating the need for a utility worker to come and manually read the
meter as that data is now transmitted wirelessly. So why can't end users access
the same data? Allowing them to do so would enable the creation of new
automation technologies that would optimize power use, such as automatically
charging an EV when costs are lowest, which could be when the sun is shining
brightly creating more supply from solar panels, or overnight when demand on
the grid is low. It would also help individuals decide when is the best time to
run their dishwasher or do laundry. The goal is to balance supply and demand
while accurately forecasting consumption and generation so power can be
supplied in a carbon neutral fashion.
New standards, specifications, and reference
frameworks will be built in the coming year for the next generation of smart
meters. This will enable end users to have more control over their power usage
and generation data, and for utilities to scale their integration and use of
DERs which will further reduce the need for fossil fuel plants. Combined with
other technology initiatives including microgrids, EV charging infrastructure,
digital substation automation systems, grid modeling and simulation, trading
platform coordination, monitoring, and control systems, these open source
efforts will in the next year and beyond build the technology stack necessary
to complete the energy transition and achieve decarbonization.
A wholesale shift is going to occur in the way
power systems operate, and at its core will be energy end users being more
involved, giving back to the grid, and using data and new technologies to take
control of their own power use, thereby transforming the entire world's
relationship to energy.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shuli Goodman is the founder and Executive
Director of LF Energy, a new Linux Foundation project that supports open source
innovation in the energy and electricity sectors. LF Energy's ambition is to
accelerate the energy transition and the decarbonization of the world's
economies. Having spent the early part of her career enabling some of the
world's largest companies in the world to become Internet-ready, she has
brought her digital-first, cross-industry background to the electricity sector.
With a doctorate in Organizational Systems focused on innovation and the energy
transition, Shuli has a uniquely multi-disciplinary approach to solving
complex, interdependent problems. She has nearly three decades experience in
the startup and ongoing support of governance and multi-stakeholder engagement
bodies that have been convened to enable decision-making and provide steering
capacity for high-visibility and/or high-risk initiatives. Her goal is to
inspire, train, and enable 10,000 developers, in the next 10 years, to
digitally transform the world's power systems.