• • • SMART BUILDINGS & IOT • • •
Can more government funding and initiatives help drive smart utilities?
The utilities industry has sometimes been criticised for being slow to change. But in the last few years, it has undergone it biggest transformation for more than two decades. Phil Beecher, president and chief executive of global industry body, Wi-SUN Alliance, looks at whether government initiatives can help accelerate smart utility developments
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ajor economic and geopolitical issues, the demand for cleaner greener energy, together with the changing expectations of customers means the utilities sector will need to change the way it operates. With an ageing power infrastructure, one of the biggest challenges today is how the industry can create a new energy future – to become more efficient, more affordable, and more sustainable.
According to research commissioned by Wi- SUN Alliance earlier this year, and interviews at industry event, Distributech 2023, senior utilities professionals believe that more government funding and initiatives is the way forward. Along with the need for with more pilot projects and implementations, and greater co-operation between the public and private sectors, it’s believed that government investment can help drive the development of smart utilities. We can see this happening already in other parts of the world. In terms of government legislation, it doesn’t come more impressive than the Biden Administration’s historic bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) passed in August 2021.
The $1.2 trillion investment in US infrastructure, including energy, is described by The White House as a “once-in-a-generation investment in our nation’s infrastructure and competitiveness”, designed to help improve efficiency and productivity, and reduce emissions.
For the utilities sector, this is good news, with $65 billion allocated for upgrading the country’s grid infrastructure to facilitate the expansion of renewables and “cutting-edge” clean energy solutions. Improving grid reliability and resiliency has never been more important for a country that experiences its fair share of extreme weather. From wildfires to hurricanes, these weather conditions put extra pressure on the grid, which increasingly suffers rolling power outages. The cost is huge, with the Department of Energy estimating that power outages cost the US economy up to $70 billion annually.
The UK has been hit by extreme weathers of its own in recent years. Heatwaves last year saw customers adding pressure to the grid as demand for air conditioning units increased, while severe flooding and storms has impacted critical infrastructure to the costs of millions. According to our survey, there is now a much greater need for technology that is designed specifically for weather and climate, and disaster management scenarios over the next 12 months. Utilities are also having to plan for a more sustainable future with much more investment in renewables. The UK government has pledged to establish a decarbonised electricity system by 2035, just over a decade away. For a risk-averse utilities sector, balancing this need for radical change with the cost of upgrading an ageing infrastructure that’s fit for purpose, will be a challenge.
National Grid has already said that it plans to spend almost £30bn upgrading the UK’s transmission systems over the next four years, but the government will need to encourage the utility companies to invest in grid upgrades using smart technologies and building the infrastructure to support them. This means putting both initiatives and funding in place – one without the other will not work.
As an industry alliance with device manufacturers, silicon companies and utilities as members, we see first-hand the exciting opportunities around smart utilities, especially advanced meter infrastructure (AMI) and connected streetlighting projects.
A growing number of deployments that started some years ago in the US are now fully mature implementations. These include an early large pilot started in 2007 with Florida Power & Light (FPL). Based on a flexible wireless mesh communications network, this deployment has been able to scale in recent years as the requirements changed, with FPL adding 75,000 streetlights to its existing smart meter network of 4.5 million meters in 2014, and then expanding this to 500,000 streetlights a year later. Pilots and projects like these are helping utilities and cities to ‘work out the kinks’ – also and mean they can prove that value of what they want to do and build the business case. Without these and industry initiatives and funding behind them, I fear opportunities and targets will be missed.
34 ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING • APRIL 2023
electricalengineeringmagazine.co.uk
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