How digitalisation supports energy transformation – an ABB perspective
14 May 2018
Image courtesy of ABB
The energy sector is experiencing a tremendous transformation. Adrian Timbus, Technology & Solutions Manager, Smart Grid & Renewables at ABB looks at how digitalisation is the single greatest opportunity to enable it.
Current challenges and changes facing the energy sector
The following are some of the changes currently facing the energy sector:
• Aging infrastructure
• Reliability
• Need for improved customer engagement
• Business model disruption
• Transitioning workforce
• Renewables penetration
• Spending justification
• Cyber security
Perhaps one of the greatest challenges is the increasing complexity in distribution networks. Vehicle to grid concepts, controlling in-home appliances and digital metering are just a few that are demanding faster and wider bandwidth communications, health monitoring network parameters and better management of voltage levels and reactive power.
Decentralisation of energy production has also challenged many countries in the world. From bulk, centralised and well controlled generation to distributed and weather dependent generation, from deterministic and well defined load profiles to volatile and reverse powers flows, from load following control to demand integrated into system operations and from operations based on historical experience to operation based on real time data – the complexity is daunting and makes digital control more important than ever.
What will characterise power systems in the future?
Renewables, grid edge technologies and digitalisation drive the evolution of future power systems. We will see factors such as full scale deployment of renewables across all regions, an increased share of energy by wire, massive introduction of grid connected electric vehicles, utilities reinventing themselves with new business models and autopilot features using artificial intelligence.
This ‘Internet of Energy’ will characterise power systems in the future:
More complexity:
• Large, interconnected systems
• Highly distributed generation
• Broad range of connected devices, from very small entities to bulk, highly centralised assets
• Various technologies and aspects coming together (batteries, power electronics, digitalisation, communications, weather etc.)
A larger ecosystem:
Image courtesy of ABB
• Consumers increasing their role in the energy system
• Millions of legally independent actors being technically connected and requiring coordination
• Electrifications of other sectors, e.g. Transportation, heating
Increasing demands:
• Greener, more sustainable energy
• Openness for unforeseen new players
• System users still expecting affordable and reliable supply with electricity
• Improved power quality
New concepts:
• Service orientated business models
• Grid users also service providers
• Digitalisation enables opportunities
• New division of work between transmission and distribution level
• Evolution of energy and power markets
• Peer to peer approaches
Why should we digitalise the energy sector?
Digitalisation supports future ambitions in terms of sustainability, quality of supply and cost of energy. A digital ecosystem will integrate players and their assets to help support business goals and processes. Yet there are challenges in the adoption of digitalisation in the energy sector – mainly security.
Deregulation of the power industry has created a multitude of roles and responsibilities, so has moving from centrally controlled to de-centralisation and automation. The employee base within these roles tend to have low digital savviness and low security awareness. The IT side of businesses is rapidly evolving to cloud based systems, leading to an increase of physical and cyber security breaches with no or insufficient real-time security surveillance or system access controls.
It’s vital that national regulations are adapted quickly to counter new threats but it’s not enough to ensure security at product level, a generic security concept across the system has to be defined and put in place. The industry needs to work together and share best practices to ensure security of systems.
There are a great many benefits that can be gained by digital solutions:
• Vastly increased situational awareness for system operators – allow them to take action to avoid the impact of system anomalies, including variances caused by cyber security events.
• Digital technologies allow for authentication of users and devices that are part of the system
Image courtesy of ABB
• Increased visibility into the activity on the communications networks that make up the grid
ABB Ability
How are ABB supporting this growth in digitalisation? The answer is through ABB Ability. ABB Ability connects customers to the power of the Industrial Internet of Things and, through ABB services and expertise, goes further by turning data insights into the direct action that "closes the loop" and generates customer value in the physical world. The ABB Ability platform is an integrated Industrial Internet platform and cloud infrastructure that enables customers to securely integrate and aggregate their data, combine with wider industry data, apply big data and predictive analytics, and generate insights that can help them drive performance and productivity improvements.
Enable the potential of distributed energy resources
ABB Ability DERMS:
Power distribution networks are being transformed by the connection of distributed energy resources (DER) like rooftop solar and battery energy storage. ABB’s Distributed Energy Resource Management System (DERMS) enables utilities to manage the entire lifecycle of DERs from registration to optimisation, while ensuring safe, secure and efficient operation of the electric distribution network. ABB Ability DERMS is built on the ABB Network Manager ADMS platform to achieve a single network model and unified geospatial control centre operator environment.
Next Kraftwerke operates one of the largest Virtual Power Plants in Europe using ABB energy optimisation solutions. The solution enables Next Kraftwerke to pool the production of hundreds of small- and medium sized renewable energy plants into a virtual power plant (VPP) that has the scale and flexibility to participate in the country’s lucrative ancillary services market. The solution collects plant production and grid balancing data, performs realtime optimisation calculations, and determines the production schedules for each power plant to ensure that grid stability is maintained and plant constraints are observed.
Read the full case study here.
Reduce O&M costs with connected asset life cycle management
ABB Ability Ellipse:
ABB Ability Ellipse is ABB’s connected asset lifecycle management solution that unifies functionality for enterprise asset management (EAM), workforce management (WFM) and asset performance management (APM). Ellipse facilitates the orchestration of priority, process and people across an organisation, enabling the management of physical assets across the entire asset lifecycle. It automates the decision making process and improves the reaction time of service and maintenance actions.
America’s largest transmission owner, American Electric Power, saved millions of dollars each year by using ABB Ability Ellipse. The company wished to prevent failures, optimise its maintenance and prioritise renewals on an aging asset base so it consolidated its SCADA, sensors & maintenance data for analysis using asset performance models from Ellipse. The results were immediately effective – fleet-wide visibility of assets, automatic alerts, warnings, explanations & action recommendations, new prioritised prescriptive work requests created and consistent prioritisation of asset replacements.
Watch the case study video here.
Summary
The complexity of the energy system increases dramatically and the speed of change is faster than we’ve seen before. There’s no doubt this is happening and it’s happening now. We, as a country, need to get ready otherwise the security of energy supply is undermined.
Digitalisation is the single greatest opportunity to allow us to cope with the transformation. Technologies, concepts and products are available now, we just need to begin integrating and further enhancing them.
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