Transforming the Grid Starts Here

How can you gain insights into the status of underground environments? What’s the best way to maintain and extend the life of existing infrastructure? How do you replace assets as needed in a cost-effective manner? Can you get the best of both worlds: enhancing current infrastructure while preparing for future, data-driven capabilities?

How do you “feed” increasingly data-hungry consumers (especially Millennials)? How do you prepare for new services like home energy management, pre-paid billing, and real-time energy usage information? Key Insight: The days of the passive energy consumer are rapidly coming to an end.

How you integrate Distributed Energy Resources (DERs)? What are the system implications of the Era of “Prosumer”? - According to a 2017 report from the IEA (PDF, 3.45 MB): “… Record performance in 2016 forms the bedrock of the IEA’s electricity forecast, which sees continued strong growth through 2022, with renewable electricity capacity forecast to expand by over 920 GW, an increase of 43%. This year’s renewable forecast is 12% higher than last year, thanks mostly to solar PV upward revisions in China and India.

What does the future of urban areas look like? In the words of an Energy.gov report: “As smart cities become more prolific – they are already appearing in a number of cities from South Korea to Spain to the US – the grid will be increasingly relied upon to handle multidirectional communications between many different entities and to balance the innovations that already have, and will continue, to develop. The grid’s integral role in the success of… smart cities is already helping to drive research and development of the advanced grid, and will continue to do so.”

Outages here have widespread impacts. With distributed intelligence, i.e. high-accuracy sensing in MV environments, you gain critical insights.

The ideal business case for Grid Modernization is one that combines extending the life of current assets in a cost-effective manner… while preparing for future grid opportunities.