What has the grid gained in the last century?
"If Alexander Graham Bell were to resurrect today and look at the telecommunications industry, he would not recognize it," Ron Chebra, managing director at the consulting firm Utility Subject Matter Experts, told the audience at the opening of the Peak Load Management Alliance (PLMA) conference in Atlanta on Tuesday.
"[But] if Thomas Alva Edison were to resurrect today and look at the power industry," he said, "it's pretty much the same."
Chebra made a valid point: Our grid is long overdue for change.
A convergence of technological innovations we can already see today, Chebra said, will bring about that transformation.
THE INTERNET OF THINGS EMERGES
"Everything today is connected via the Internet," Chebra said.
With laptops, tablets and smartphones, "we are all mobile operators," Chebra noted. "I can control my Wi-Fi-enabled thermostat from my phone whether I'm in Atlanta, Ga., Athens, Greece or at my home in Princeton, N.J."
Humans, devices and appliances are becoming increasingly interconnected and integrated, Chebra said, to the point that "you will even have one button that does it all." Potentially, that one button could set your alarm, lock your doors or turn off your lights.
"As we start looking at where machines will go in the future," Chebra said, "the function of an aggregate consumption meter on the side of the home will become diminished. It's not a stretch of the imagination to say you can have a device-based tariff based on the efficiency of the unit."
"It's becoming an Internet of Things," Chebra said.
TRANSFORMATION OF THE ELECTRICAL INDUSTRY
"The electrical industry is going through metamorphic changes," Chebra said. "It is no longer a very stodgy, linear business. It is a very complex business."
Electric utilities, the long-established players in the space, face pressure on all sides. They want to simultaneously appease regulators, extend asset life, deal with the intermittence of renewables, anticipate new loads, improve reliability, mitigate risk and uncertainty, operate with greater autonomy, leverage field data for improved operations and maximize return on assets.
It used to be very simple. You had a utility, and it owned everything from the power plants to the transmission and distribution cables and the meter in your home. But today, that one-way energy value chain has become disrupted—by technology, by innovation and by the build-up of much-needed change to what is—by today's standards—an ancient system.
Broader industry trends, such as the rise of microgrids and distributed generation, the need for improved power quality and the diminishing cost of renewables are impacting the way utilities do business and creating greater need for load control.
The electrical industry, which was once "very clearly defined" and "black-and-white," is "blurring" today, Chebra said.
THE FUTURE OF DEMAND RESPONSE
"Whoever said this business was easy?" Chebra rhetorically asked the audience.
"There [are] a lot of things that are happening that are blurring," Chebra said, "and a key underlying enablement for blur is the Internet and connectivity and cloud services."
Mobility will bring the customer closer to the industry, Chebra said. "Being able to touch, reach, interact and be a part of the customer wherever they are physically is going to be a game-changer. The day of a facility operator hitting the curtailment OK button on his panel is gone. Device management will become paramount."
Connected devices will harmonize, technology will become more intuitive ("I can't remember the last time I read a user manual," Chebra quipped) and networks will become more robust to support new opportunities like ancillary services.
"And if you haven't heard it, you will. The machine-to-machine (M2M) market is booming," Chebra said.
Finishing off the telecom-to-utility analogy, "the carriers AT&T, Verizon and Sprint realize they have reached the saturation point with customers for cell phones," Chebra said. "The machine-to-machine business is the next boom area for connectivity and device inter-operation."
"A good colleague of mine once said: he who controls the load, controls the power. We have the opportunity to control the load, to manage the peak and to turn this opportunity into great business."
Enjoyed what you read? You may also want to read Utility Dive's look at why demand response and energy efficiency aren't (but should be) on the same team.