Ensuring quality of supply and grid resilience is vital to reliable and efficient supply of electricity. However, maintaining high-quality power delivery and a resilient grid can get tricky in an increasingly complex and dynamic grid that needs to accommodate renewables, EV charging and high activity from prosumers. How can grid planners and network operators achieve their goals of maintaining a safe, reliable and resilient grid ? In this blog, we highlight seven ways how a grid monitoring service can help.
Traditional electricity network management has been based on one single direction of the energy coming from large production units to the end-users. With the energy sector shifting from fossil-based to zero-carbon energy sources connected to medium- and low-voltage, grid operators come across completely new challenges. Moreover, with the electrification of transportation and heating sectors as well as the latest socioeconomic developments, energy demand and energy prices increase dramatically. In this new energy era commercial and industrial meters are called to serve a wider range of applications than energy billing.
Energy used to flow one way down the value chain. Power plants generated power, high-voltage lines transmitted it to your neighborhood substations, and wires from poles brought it home. All of this happened behind a meter, with consumers only ever engaging when using electricity or paying a utility bill. They knew nothing of how they got their energy let alone do anything about it. However, this is beginning to change.
Communication is a core component of any smart-grid or AMI implementation. Depending on application use cases, geography, rural/urban areas or existing infrastructure however, a grid operator may choose PLC, mesh or cellular communications. With an increasingly diverse and active consumer base that now includes prosumers, electric vehicle charging, renewables and more, how can utilities ensure that all these segments are served without disrupting their AMI?
Power and quality. Should be familiar words to all of us. But why have I written them here like this, together? Is there something special about them? According to surveys, the cost of poor power quality is over 150 billion euros a year to European business. So, power quality may not be your core business, but your core business is affected by power quality.
As decarbonization, deentralization and digitalization continue to affect the energy industry, DSO's are taking on new roles and greater challenges in ensuring a reliable, resilient grid. In the IoT era of OT/IT convergence , where are you in your journey to transformation ?
