It goes without saying anymore that people and businesses in an increasingly connected world rely on the Internet for personal and commercial communication. We are also in the midst of a continuing migration of people are increasingly moving to cities as the world is becoming more urbanized. What has also become clear is that cities with a smart grid and a solid IP infrastructure thrive more than cities that do not. The case for the smart city has never been stronger.
First, the demographic shift: Roughly half of the world’s population lived in an urban area in 2010. By 2050, according to the World Health Organization, nearly 7 out of 10 people will live in an urban environment. Unsurprisingly, by 2025 there will be 37 mega-cities with a population above 10 million people, according to the United Nations Environment Programme.
This alone should be reason for government and industry to come together and invest in the network resources to support this city population. But there is good economic reason, too.
Cities with good broadband infrastructure reap the benefits, according to stats compiled in a recent TechZine posting, Smart cities are built on smart networks, by Marc Jadoul, Strategic Marketing Director, and Jacques Vermeulen, Director, Global Solution Leader for Smart Government, Alcatel-Alcatel-Lucent. As the authors note, a 10 percent increase in broadband penetration produces between 0.25 and 3.6 percent growth in GDP, and 80 new jobs are created for every 1,000 additional broadband users. Further, broadband is responsible for 20 percent of new jobs across all businesses, and 30 percent of new jobs in businesses with less than 20 employees.
But what does it mean to be a smart city?
First, it means having a city-net based on wireline and wireless broadband networks that give access to a high-capacity IP and optical communications infrastructure.
Second, it means investment. Smart cities invest in data centers and a government cloud, control platforms for multimedia and machine-to-machine (M2M) communications.
Third, once the foundation is laid, the city’s public infrastructure (including buildings, public space, roads, traffic lights, parking, etc.) is optimized for peak efficiency and environmental preservation.
“Elements like a smart grid helps reduce CO2 footprint and energy bills, and wireless sensors can continuously monitor and control pollution, lighting, and waste,” noted the Alcatel-Lucent blog post.
Fourth, entrepreneurship is leveraged to create new applications to enrich daily life of all citizens. New York City, for instance, relies upon third-party developers for apps that make its metro easier to navigate.
Participation is also key. In fact, community engagement is a crucial factor for successful smart city rollout. This includes citizen participation, feedback loops, as well as social media interaction and dedicated community portals.
The case for the smart city is obvious. But will government heed the call.
As populations increasingly migrate from rural to urban areas, power utilities face new economic challenges and opportunities around creating and maintaining adaptive grid communications network infrastructure.
The dynamics of this global change are fairly well known, although how to address the challenges isn’t so obvious. For example, cities consume three quarters of energy and contribute 80 percent of CO2 emissions globally, according to a recent report in The Guardian. How can that energy be most effciently delivered, with minimal environmental impact?
Consensus is emerging that what’s needed are smarter, safer, greener cities. Governments and municipalities are under pressure to invest in sustainable infrastructure capable of efficiently delivering services to citizens and workers.
There’s a pretty compelling smart grid transformation opportunity for public-private partnerships embedded in this evolution. Together, telecom service providers and information and communication technology (ICT) providers can bring in their assets, expertise and experience to help power utilities meet goals for smart grid applications.
Smarter energy management for power utilities is an imperative, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy to achieve.
ICT is an important driver of economic competiveness, livability and environmental sustainability associated with smart grid transformation for smart cities, noted Marc Jadoul and Jacques Vermeulen of Alcatel-Lucent in a recent TechZine article, “Smart practices for building smart cities.”
“The right ICT infrastructure will affect the way each city will be created and evolve,” Jadoul and Vermeulen noted. “It will enable smart cities to include vastly enhanced sustainable areas, such as smart buildings, smart infrastructures (water, energy, heat, and transportation) and smart services (e-substitutes and e-services for travel, health, education, and entertainment), which drastically change the urban experience for city dwellers and travellers.”
Using broadband networks to provide access for high-capacity communications infrastructure, the city net becomes the backbone of a smart city. Creating that backbone requires investment in an open data approach flexible for a variety of applications that benefit both the city and its population.
This infrastructure foundation opens up opportunities to optimize a city's public infrastructure, including a smart grid to reduce CO2 footprint and lower energy bills. For example, wireless sensors can continuously monitor and control lighting.
Other important aspects of an effective smart grid include real-time remote grid monitoring substation automation, smart metering, and green energy devices.
]]>The Internet of Things (IoT) is enabling the world around us to exchange data via a common network. This data will actually help us to understand the ‘things’ (objects and devices) in our lives and make sense of it. But how does the IoT improve our lives?
By 2020, the IoT will connect more than 26 billion devices and almost anything – your connected car, your dog’s collar, and even your entire city – will be able to communicate with each another. Cities are getting bigger and there are a lot of opportunities to streamline operations and manage scarce resources with IoT technology. Innovations in IoT technology are helping public and private organizations gain in-depth insight into the needs of their communities. Cities will become smart – developing strategies to improve their infrastructure, plan for long-term growth, create more energy-efficient environments, and keep people safe.
Communication Service Providers are leveraging Smart City technology as a means of attracting new consumers in sectors of critical infrastructure such as energy, utility, transportation, and all areas of government, by virtue of delivering them a value that has previously not been attainable. This value is derived through gains in efficiency that are achieved as a result of the interoperability and interconnectedness of all devices and objects that operate on the city’s platform. City services and operations will no longer operate as individual silos, but rather as a single cohesive program. Smart City technologies offer its consumers new ways to develop and act upon intelligence about their communities. Additionally, these technologies provide adaptable interfaces to best serve the needs of individual and unique cities as well as tools to manage city operations in the most efficient and cost-effective manner.
Source: Verizon. Smart Cities Solutions, 2014.
But IoT isn’t just about technology. It’s about improving the everyday lifestyle of community members and considering the human factor in every organization or community.
Cities are growing at a faster rate than the world population. This will make for greater challenges in managing the operations of these continually expanding cities. IoT technology can help cities streamline their operations, reduce resource consumption, and enable better services to citizens. Let’s take a look at a few examples of how Smart City can help organizations:
Asset tracking will streamline operations and achieve operational efficiency like never before. Cities will be able to track the location of city assets such as utility vehicles, containers or busses and raise alerts when unexpected events occur. Let’s say a driver comes to a stop that is longer than expected – an alert will be immediately raised and and the city can find the closest suited vehicle to take its place.
From an environmental perspective, Smart City technology can reduce consumption and wastage of resources such as energy, water, and greenhouse gases by a significant amount. Boston University used Big Belly to install self-powered trash receptacles which wirelessly alerted collection vehicles when the receptacles were full. The result? On-campus trash collection was reduced from 14 times per week to an average of 1.6 times per week.
Smart City machines will enable better services to citizens by managing operations automatically, without human intervention. Intelligent lighting can automatically manage an organization’s electricity with technology such as activity sensors which turn off all the lights when no one is physically nearby and humidity sensors which adjust to find the perfect temperature.
The IoT and Smart Cities presents an enormous opportunity for achieving social, economic and environmental benefits. With many data sources, many applications and many stakeholders, a horizontal platform approach that spans across verticals and across use cases is critical to ensure success. The platform must be highly scalable, capable of interacting with many different systems and securely broker sensitive information to relevant stakeholders while protecting sensitive data and privacy of citizens.
What are your thoughts? What are the key applications and challenges? Share your thoughts in the comments below. We’d love to know what you think!
When he’s not blogging or on social media, Anthony Trinh (@Trinh_Anthony) is a fourth-year marketing and information systems student from Carleton University in Ottawa. He is currently completing a co-op term as the Integrated Marketing Assistant for the Motive Solutions Marketing group at Alcatel-Lucent.
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This is the third in the three part series looking at how IP, which has been playing an important role in business transformation for some time, now has become critical to the utilities industry as it is leveraging the transformation of communications networks to IP to maximize smart grid deployments. In short, taking full advantage of things like smart metering and big data means to improve usage, real-time information and improved interoperability.
The future of the smart grid has unfolded slowly partially because adoption is more than a technology issue, and because while businesses want reliability, utilities demand it; a cautious IP migration is almost a given. In fact, part of the path to adoption goes through social challenges, not just technology investment.
As a GridTalk posting on managing the IP evolution inside and outside the organization, by Raul Katz, Ph.D., Director of Business Strategy Research, Columbia Institute for Tele-Information noted, assimilating the new technology on a social level is as significant as making the capital expenditures.
“Changing the business processes, training employees, adapting your organization and operations to the benefit you can derive from technology – in economics this is called the accumulation of intangible capital – means that once you purchase the systems it will take you some time to get to that point, especially in large companies,” noted Raul Katz, director of business strategy research at the Columbia Institute for Tele-Information at Columbia Business School. “It’s called the lag effect. We’ve typically seen this take three to five years, because you’re dealing with human beings and social systems.”
Source: To download GridTalk click here.
He also explained that utilities will have the most success with their IP migration if they focus on change management programs and training.
“In many cases, the programs need to be combined with incentives – not necessarily material – to adopt the new modes of operation,” he noted. “These could range from recognition to additional training activities.”
There also is the need to get it right from the beginning. This need to combine programs with incentives was a big focus for Creos Luxembourg S.A. when it embarked on an ambitious, multi-faceted IP/MPLS project for its national electricity and gas network to replace its existing TDM-based communications system. “With latencies of 5ms-6ms between connecting nodes, you have to have a very high level of control to guarantee service and performance,” noted Patrick Colling, Creos communications expert.
When Creos rolled out its MPLS network, it consulted numerous vendors and had them analyze the situation and test four current differential protections talking together over four high voltage stations to ensure teleprotection.
This methodical process took time, but it has paid off for Creos.
“Since the beginning of 2013, teleprotection has worked throughout our network without any incidents, and we can say that for us there is no difference in teleprotection between the classical interconnection and IP/MPLS,” he said.
Cyber security also requires caution.
“IP is the best-known protocol around the world, so there is absolutely the need to dedicate a lot of time to analyzing how best to bring cybersecurity into the transmission system,” Colling noted. “That took us a complete year. We analyzed it and have now finalized our design assisted by Alcatel-Lucent. It includes things like encryption, firewalls and new security features for routers. You need to analyze your services and how to secure them from beginning to end, and we are convinced that through our investments we have done just that.”
But the benefits of migrating to IP have been worth the time for Creos and others. The future of the smart grid, after all, is going to be heavily reliant on the underlying communications infrastructure transformation to all IP.
A few years ago, the idea of a smart grid and things such as smart metering was the stuff of science fiction. But thanks to recent innovations, a utility that is not working on a migration to IP is behind the curve.
In this second of a three-part series on the value of the migration utility infrastructure to IP as the means to enable and enhance the value of smart grids, we look at an expert’s view of the challenges as highlighted in a recent GridTalk posting by Bart Vrancken, utilities solutions architect at Alcatel-Lucent, who noted, “Utilities telecom used to be very simple, handled in the background with a very small team…The explosive growth in intelligent grid devices with communication capabilities was not foreseen at all several years back. But now we see numerous examples of customers deploying these technologies.”
That’s partially because the idea of a single, converged IP architecture has been shown to work at this point, and IP/MPLS is both reliable and efficient enough for utilities that cannot afford anything less than mission-critical reliability.
Source: To download GridTalk click here.
As Vrancken explains, a 99.999 percent reliable IP/MPLS infrastructure and intelligent sensors throughout the distribution layer and at consumer end points yields:
It does all of this while allowing more seamless integration of distributed renewable energy sources. That’s a nifty trick, and a good reason why an increasing number of utilities have started to make the IP migration.
“Of course, with IP protocol reaching to all corners of the network, cybersecurity becomes an important issue that utilities must address,” he said. “We’re pushing very hard to have IP/MPLS deeper in the network, so security is integrated throughout our solutions – all included from the beginning in the design.”
One of the reasons MPLS is favored among utilities is that it works both with modern IP services as well as older technologies. This seamless integration is essential for utilities, which need in most cases to make a gradual transition and keep some of the older infrastructure while the migration occurs.
IP/MPLS also is necessary to support the great volume of devices that are expected to emerge as part of the overall move to IP. According to GridTalk, there will be 50 billion connected devices by 2015. Of that total, 12 percent will be related to the utilities space. That’s a lot of devices!
“Once you’re talking about the low-voltage side of your network it means a factor of 100 more nodes than on your high-voltage transmission network,” noted Vrancken. “By the time you move to a different focus level deeper in the network, you have another device expansion factor of 100. So, if you have 100 high-voltage substations in a small country such as Belgium, for example, the low-voltage distribution sites will grow by a factor of 1,000.”
The flexibility and automation needed for such volume is well accommodated by IP/MPLS. Indeed, it is becoming increasingly clear that the path to optimized smart grids is going to rest on leveraging IP/MPLS migration.
]]>In short, the networking piece of smart grid deployments is critical, as the migration of utility infrastructure to meet the needs to remotely monitor and manage their grids grows in complexity. “The new IP/MPLS technologies offer a great deal of benefits within the utility in cost savings, operational efficiency and cost savings, and they also mandate a new way to operate, bridging those traditional organizational silos,” noted Mark Burke, VP of Intelligent Networks and Communications for DNV – GL, in a recent GridTalk posting.
In the first of what will be a three-part series on smart grids and the value that can be created the economic perspective provided by Burke, who outlined a number of ways that smart grid projects can maximize their technology investment, is instructive.
Source: To download GridTalk click here.
Burke provided a number of recommendations that will resonate with utilities as they evaluate how to move forward, and here are five of particular significance.
First, embrace standards.
“Standards drive innovation while maintaining security and reliability”, noted Burke. “They encourage mass production, driving the cost of equipment down, while also enabling the development of an ecosystem of value-added products and solutions. They reduce the total cost of ownership for the systems they procure, but also encourage the development of devices that may leverage communications protocols to provide additional value to customers and the society at large.”
Second, monetize excess capacity.
Adding high-bandwidth fiber is a big investment, but it also can create new profit centers that can help projects recoup the investment. One way to monetize excess capacity is through establishing an unregulated subsidiary tasked with taking advantage of the newly-created infrastructure.
Third, prepare for distributed power generation.
One side benefit of deploying a converged IP/MPLS system is readiness for distributed generation and renewable energy sources such as wind power and photovoltaics.
“With IP/MPLS you can accommodate these in a common architecture and in a standards-based environment so that the unit costs are low over time,” noted Burke. “As the smart grid environment matures and gets more diverse with renewables and other new challenges, the total cost of implementation will go down as well.”
Fourth, consider public-private partnerships, especially where investment in energy infrastructure is traditionally lacking. In some markets, demand response can’t be exploited by governmental entities or utilities but third-party, commercial concerns can capture that value instead of leaving it on the table.
Finally, it is worth the effort to help shape public regulation.
“Power providers should really get involved with educating both consumers and regulators, which may have very small staffs and are overburdened,” Burke suggested. “Only through that level of engagement will help maximize the value of moving to a more sophisticated energy system including IP/MPLS-based smart grid. The regulators are quite sensitive to the needs of the customers.”
There are other ways to maximize investment on the Alcatel-Lucent blog post, but these are ones that clearly should be top of mind.
As leaders in Europe debate whether the EU is “back” during the World Economic Forum, the region is increasingly falling behind when it comes to telecommunications, according to Alcatel-Lucent CEO Michel Combes.
“There is a real danger,” noted Combes in a recent blog post on Europe’s digital divide (published in the Wall Street Journal, “that Europe is losing ground in the information era.”
That’s because there is an increasing gap between what the latest smartphones can deliver and what Europe’s telecommunications companies can support due to a price war that inhibits infrastructure upgrades.
“Europe is locked in a vicious circle of competition focused exclusively on price, one that forces operators to reduce their investments and destroys their innovation capacity,” noted Combes. “This type of competition is bad news for a digital Europe and its consumers.”
The digital agenda in Europe needs to be reset by the likes of the European Telecommunications Network Operators’ Association (ETNO) and others. Telecommunications investment in the order of between €110 and €170 billion will be needed by 2020 if the region is to keep pace with the rest of the world in terms of cellular infrastructure and innovation. Failure could cost Europe €750 billion in lost GDP growth, and as many as 5.5 million highly-skilled jobs for young qualified European graduates.
“That’s a high price to pay for accepting life in a slow-motion telecoms world,” he noted.
What Europe must do, first and foremost, is move to an all-IP network infrastructure, supported by a virtualized infrastructures based on cloud technology.
Combes also suggested that Europe must invest more in applications and analytics and capabilities such as SDN and NFV.
“Today eight out of the top 10 global Internet platforms are American,” he wrote, and the two others are Chinese. “A new model of international work distribution seems to be taking shape in which the profitable operators are in the U.S. and the American Internet platforms are taking most of the residual value in Europe, while the application development centers are in India and the manufacturing is in China.”
Europe led the way when it came to 3G deployment, but now it is being left behind.
To fix the problem, operators need to end a competition model that is only based on reducing prices in the short term. Spectrum allocation also needs to be reviewed, and shared and efficient policies on net neutrality must be crafted to allow operators to differentiate themselves and revive investment.
“We also need to come back down to earth and stop thinking that the telecom sector can continue with 120 operators in Europe, subject to rules and procedures that change from one country to another,” Combes boldly wrote.
If Europe is not to fall too far behind, its digital agenda must tackle the recent decline in telecommunications. Importantly, as Combes stated, it must do so with a sense of urgency and purpose.
]]>But only a little of its promise.
The most futuristic M2M scenarios remain largely limited to intranets of things, ranging from the home to the intelligent city, production systems such as electricity, or just stand-alone intelligent objects intended to provide dedicated services.
“Such cases are still relatively simple, with a limited range of objects and behaviors which are generally designed and calibrated in advance,” noted Mathieu Boussard of Bell Labs recently in an interesting posting, The Internet of Things, a natural (r)evolution.
The real game-changing M2M applications won’t start appearing until internet-enabled objects can be brought together in scenarios not yet planned by their manufacturers—or “even to take it upon themselves to collaborate for a shared purpose,” according to Boussard.
Getting there will take software advances and innovation from network operators. It also will take hardware advances.
The M2M of the future that will drive enterprise solutions needs to be self-powered, have embedded control software, processing and communication capabilities, and ideally provide for human interaction, according to Boussard.
On the network side, M2M devices need to be identified and given an address, data routing needs to be provided in a changeable context (mobility, unavailability), they need to be made interoperable with each other and with technologies with a wide range of purposes (such as energy efficiency, or performance), and to handle a range of service quality requirements, among other needs.
“And from a software/system point of view, the resulting ecosystem of ecosystems needs to be managed – including managing resources, the data produced (and its distribution) and the network formed by these objects, where possible using all the self-organization that can be harnessed in a highly dynamic and heterogeneous context,” concluded Boussard.
To make the M2M revolution meet its promise, it will also take more than just a single vendor. Bell Labs and Alcatel Lucent will play their part, offering innovative M2M solutions such as Alcatel-Lucent’s Motive Machine-to-Machine Platform.
“ But the test will be our ability to grasp all the complexity of this evolutionary change – just as no one ‘owns’ the Internet ecosystem now, so no single player will be able to build the Internet of Things alone,” wrote Boussard.
Ultimately the challenge for M2M to reach its promise is not technological. It is collaborating effectively.
]]>By Beecher Tuttle
Skyrocketing energy demands and the push for greener, more sustainable energy solutions has helped bring smart grids to prominence, and has encourage a number of utilities to deploy a next-generation network alongside their electrical grid.
AltaLink, one of Canada's largest electricity transmission providers, is one of the utilities that is currently undergoing the complex, yet highly advantageous transition from a TDM architecture to a next-generation IP-based network.
In an effort to provide other utilities with a roadmap for the migration, Clinton Struth, principal engineer at AltaLink, and Dr. Marc Maurer, key account manager at Alcatel-Lucent (ALU) recently authored a TechZine article, IP/MPLS-based Networks for Mission-Critical Services, that details some of the benefits and challenges of embracing a smarter network.
AltaLink's initiative was born back in 2007, when the company made the decision to replace their ATM and TDM-based network with a next-generation, packet-based Wide Area Network (WAN). When looking at their options, the company felt that it had two reasonable choices; it could deploy an Internet Protocol/Multi-Protocol Label Switching (IP/MPLS) infrastructure or a next -generation Synchronous Digital Hierarchy/Synchronous Optical Network (SDH/SONET).
When looking at the SDH/SONET option, AltaLink found that it didn't offer as much value as they had hoped, other than its ability to extend the lifespan of the network itself.
IP/MPLS, on the other hand, provides a cost-effective, visually-oriented network management system that enables utilities to provision, manage and operate critical smart grid services as well as the ability to report on their statistics. Couple this with the solution's dynamic bandwidth allocation and the fact that most AltaLink services would likely transition to IP, and AltaLink made their choice.
After evaluating several vendors and completing a series of pilot tests, AltaLink selected its supplier, Alcatel Lucent, in January 2010 and began the rollout a year later.
Now about halfway through the migration, Struth and AltaLink believe the IP/MPLS infrastructure is highly capable of enabling the "better management of the transmission infrastructure to ensure more reliability, safety and cost efficiency."
Struth's confidence in IP/MPLS stems from the fact that the technology overcomes two common doubts:
Some utilities have questioned whether IP/MPLS can meet the strict latency requirements necessary to run an electrical grid. Struth has found this concern to be inaccurate, noting that IP/MPLS has been used to deliver time-sensitive applications like backhauling of mobile data traffic for many years.
As noted in the posting, "IP/MPLS is sometimes and incorrectly still perceived as connection-less IP-technology that can provide very cost-efficient data transport but only with a 'best-effort' like quality of service (QoS)… This is the case for IP only however in contrast, the MPLS part of IP/MPLS makes the solution connection-oriented and capable of multiple guaranteed QoS levels."
As for cyber-security, AltaLink and ALU were able to implement a multi-tier security concept with multiple security layers and intrusion-detection check-points. This move, which adds full control plane protection, comprehensive password protection and several additional security layers, is enabling the company to align it network security with that of Tier-1 carriers.
"By successfully engineering the network to support critical applications such as SCADA and TPR, this next-generation network can not only replace existing TDM networks but is flexible enough for a smart grid future," the two authors add.
Struth and Maurer offered a few key takeaways from the migration that can help utilities that follow in AltaLink’s footsteps:
While much of the attention of smart grid deployments has been on the benefits for consumers and electric utilities in terms of things like customer control and choice and utility efficiency and eco-sustainability, the next generation communications infrastructure to enable smart grid benefits to be fully realized is a critical piece of the story. And, as AltaLink’s example shows, IP/MPLS - based networks are a core part of ensuring utility communications infrastructures are up to the challenge.
]]>By Susan Campbell
The ever-increasing demand for energy has created the need for the development of the Smart Grid. This efficient approach to energy management and consumption will change the way we produce, consume and recycle energy. The efficient operation of the Smart Grid will be a long time in coming, however, as many challenges still exist to complete implementation and adoption.
According to a recent Alcatel-Lucent article, Dealing with the Smart Grid’s Key Drivers and Challenges, the future of smart grids includes significant changes to the way we live, work and play. It is expected to impact the business landscape, the energy marketplace and the ways in which we interact both culturally and socially.
In the future smart grids will also enhance control and convenience in the industrialized work, while also enabling positive social progress in developing nations. These benefits are expected to gain traction, but the speed and success will depend greatly on how skillfully energy providers today manage change.
The Smart Grid's challenges demand that we overcome the question of “will we thrive, or merely survive?” The Smart Grid can truly create significant change for both operators and consumers and how well players on both sides anticipate and prepare for those changes will determine the outcome.
One key area of change will be in cultural values. The Smart Grid’s key drivers have always been increased efficiency and reduced reliability on costly resources or offshore supplies. Traditionally, users thought little of their energy use, perhaps paying attention only to the number of lights on in the house or the temperature on the thermostat. In the new culture, we will be in control of how and how much and from where we consume energy.
The Smart Grid will extend beyond the walls of our homes and businesses, reaching out to transportation, communications and other key areas. Exciting and powerful new applications will allow us to fully manage all activities, determining our energy consumption and controlling just how much we rely on the grid itself.
The future of the Smart Grid includes electric vehicles and thousands of renewable generation sources that will add significant management complexity, while also assisting in the migration to peak demand issues, political instability and fluctuating energy prices. With the introduction of partnerships and coalitions, higher value will be extended to both energy operators and consumers.
All stakeholders understanding the opportunities in this space will benefit from the advanced technologies and regional regulatory environments as they create the perfect landscape for new high-potential business models. Those who can understand and effectively address the key drivers for success will benefit the most. The Smart Grid can help support these transformations as long as scalability, reliability and full inclusion for millions of consumers are included.
By Susan Campbell
Our growing reliance on energy has sparked a new focus on how to make consumption more efficient. The Smart Grid has emerged as an important focus in this space, projected to impact the business landscape, the energy marketplace and even the ways in which we interact.
According to a recent Alcatel-Lucent article, EPB Chattanooga: Customers at the Center of the Smart Grid’s Future, smart grids will also enhance convenience and control within the industrialized world while positive social progress is enabled in developing countries. The level of skill with which energy providers are able to manage change will determine when and how well the benefits of smart grid technology will gain traction.
Three things we know for certain regarding the potential in development and deployment of smart grids:
“These days we’re used to instant information, to quick response, and to having control over a lot more things in our homes and our lives, but that hasn’t been true for electricity, said Harold DePriest, President and CEO, Electric Power Board of Chattanooga (EPB), in the Alcatel-Lucent piece. “The Smart Grid is changing that reality, bringing electric systems into the 21st Century.”
EPB has been in the process of rolling out a gigabit passive optical fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) network for its entire service area. More than 170,000 customers and 90,000 smart meters have already been installed and connected to a smart grid. This roll out will easily become the model for future innovations as it is currently the fastest fiber-based smart grid in North America managing electrical usage information in real-time.
“Whether it’s providing advanced services or dealing with outages, we’re going to be able to do it quicker, with customers communicating interactively with the electric system through mobile devices and other platforms,” said DePriest. “It’s going to make us a more relevant and convenient part of people’s lives.”
While service providers and electric companies understand the value and importance of the smart grid’s future implementation, convincing customers they must pay more for a service they don’t quite understand will be an uphill battle. As such, utilities companies must create more value for the customers to ensure widespread support and adoption.
To accomplish this, utilities must be able to create more efficiency, better reliability and additional services. EPB has effectively demonstrated all three. In fact, according to the Electric Power Research Institute, EPB has created value for its customers to the tune of roughly $300 million over 10 years in the form of reduced outages, energy conversation and other efficiencies. To promote the adoption of smart grid technology, this is a powerful case study for success.
By Erin Harrison
With the world’s overall energy demand increasing by what seems to be the hour, deployment of smart grids presents new opportunities for utilities and service providers – but first they need to weigh all the factors involved in the future of smart grid.
According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), global energy demand is expected to rise by nearly 40 percent between now and 2035, as cited in a recent Alcatel-Lucent article, “Anticipating the Future’s Smart Grid Economy.”
Power utilities are indeed presented with new revenue opportunities, but they need to determine how they fit in to the future Smart Grid.
Years from now, the Smart Grid will change our lives: it will impact our business landscape, the energy marketplace and the ways in which we interact socially and culturally. In addition it will enhance control and convenience in the industrialized world while helping positive social progress in developing nations. When and how well these benefits gain traction will depend on how well energy providers manage change.
Citing the opinion of Ravi Krishnaswamy, vice president, Energy Practice, Frost & Sullivan, Alcatel-Lucent said the optimal smart grid value proposition depends on numerous factors related to regional needs, national priorities, technology development and regulatory environment.
“It’s not a one size fits all situation,” says Krishnaswamy. “Each utility will have to weigh these factors, then arrive at elements of Smart Grid that works for them.”
Renewable energy market will start taking a significant share of the power source in many countries. Krishnaswamy notes that smart grids are essential for utilities and nations that want to grow their renewable generation base, which itself is a key element in the equation for meeting future demand
Smart grid adoption will vary from community to community based on markets being served, regulatory environment and other factors.
As Alcatel-Lucent points out, smart grid technologies are changing business models for power providers in several ways, including deferred investment in expensive power plants, reduced maintenance and service costs, more efficient and reliable load management and that expected proliferation in potentially lucrative smart services using the smart grid’s communications infrastructure.
While much progress has been made with today’s smart grid, the smart grid of the future will impact our business landscape, the energy marketplace and the ways in which we interact socially and culturally.
]]>While much progress has been made with today’s smart grid, the smart grid of the future will impact our business landscape, the energy marketplace and the ways in which we interact socially and culturally.
The smart grid’s largest social impact will be seen in developing nations, notes Christine Hertzog, managing director of the Smart Grid Library, in a posting “Managing Change for the Smart Grid.” Hertzog states that approximately 2.4 billion people of the world live in energy poverty – what she terms a “permanent blackout.”
In addition, the smart grid will enhance control and convenience in the industrialized world while allowing for social progress in developing nations, according to smart grid experts. When and how well these benefits gain traction will depend on how skillfully today’s energy providers manage change.
“The technologies in smart grid can make a huge difference in delivering electricity to these people,” Herzog says. “Whereas we will see incremental improvements in our lives, for them this will be the difference between night and day.”
Applications such as micro grids – highly local, renewably produced electricity that has selected destinations, based on a communal decision such as powering a well, will be part of that change management for the smart grid, especially in developing nations.
Smart grid design is another area of change management that needs consideration. Smart grid designs should incorporate social and cultural behaviors and viewpoints in order to fully enable the benefits of the smart grid going forward, according to Hertzog.
She notes that while the underlying technology may be the same, how information is presented could have some very localized distinctions, therefore power utilities need to make sure that their interfaces are appropriate for all of those consumers.
With a shared system for existing and new services, energy draw can be managed and systems protected with a complete view of what is happening across the network - at every level.
Other social considerations include messaging to consumers, so that those reaping the benefits of the smart grid understand how far-reaching those positive implications can go.
According to Hertzog, social acceptance and satisfaction is dependent upon three categories of messaging to consumers, not just the environmental benefits, but also how a smart grid is capable of supporting electrified transportation, therefore improving a country’s energy security.
“That message needs to be more strongly communicated. This can help eliminate wars and massive environmental cleanups based on our continuing reliance on oil,” she says.
Another area consumers need to be aware of is the rewards and the risks that go along with new types of energy consumption data made available to them as well as utilities and third parties, Hertzog adds.
Finally, consumers also need to be made aware and secure in the new kinds of relationships between various companies that are being forged in the smart grid ecosystem – for example, where a company other than the main energy provider may own the consumer relationship.
By Beecher Tuttle
Ever-increasing energy consumption, skyrocketing operating costs and pressure from regulatory bodies to help create a greener world have forced power utilities to reassess their delivery management methods.
The need for change – along with the recent influx of innovative network technologies – has led many utilities and distribution and system operators (TDSOs) to embrace the smart grid, a concept aimed at leveraging the power of next-generation networks to improve the efficiency and reliability of energy delivery and usage. The visibility and control provided by the smart grid enables utilities to match supply and demand, optimize delivery, cut operating costs and reduce carbon emissions.
In addition, a smart grid opens up a two-way communication system between utilities and customers, thus creating additional upsell opportunities and the ability for consumers to take a hands-on approach to energy conservation. Smart grid customers have access to their own webpage that details their energy consumption and the associated costs.
Deploying a smart energy grid is vital for utilities to thrive in the current environment, but it doesn't come without complications. TDSOs need to chose the appropriate technologies, understand their network requirements and make major decisions like if they should build their own communications infrastructure or lease it from a service provider.
Many of these questions can be answered by Alcatel-Lucent, whose Integrated Communications for Power Utilities solution is a proven way to take utilities into the 21st century of energy delivery and efficiency.
With its experience designing and deploying IP and LTE broadband wireless access networks, Alcatel-Lucent has a unique perspective on what is needed to get a smart grid initiative up and running.
In a recent white paper, Smart Choices for the Smart Grid, Alcatel researchers give TDSOs a window into some of the challenges that need to be addressed before implementing smart grid initiatives as well as what is necessary to accelerate their deployment.
Some of the insight provided in the article is strategically based, while other portions center on tactical decisions. For example, Alcatel stresses that application-specific, single-purpose networks like SCADA are simply too expensive and impractical to manage.
"A better, less costly strategy would be an integrated communications network supporting all applications, with proper implementation of quality of service (QoS), reliability, security and unified network management tools to ensure delivery of critical smart grid application traffic," according to the authors.
Alcatel also believes that smart grid-related network technologies should always be IP-based. This way, reliability, redundancy and availability are all but assured. In addition, IP-based network layer technologies allow utilities to tap into innovative telecom-related products and services.
"Legacy protocols can be carried through IP using a variety of methods such as tunneling via multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) — a proven technology deployed broadly in large enterprise and carrier networks and already being adopted by the utility industry," the authors add.
The white paper delves into the common TDSO concern over wireless spectrum, a necessary component that many utilities don't have access to, at least not enough to support video surveillance and other real-time smart grid applications.
Alcatel believes that the answer to this problem is public/private partnerships and FCC spectrum allocations. If TDSOs are able to have access to lower spectrum bands with between 3 and 5 Mb/s of wireless throughput per sector, smart grid adoption would surge.
With spectrum issues front and center with the FCC and smart grid deployment in the U.S. ramping up, it will be interesting the choices electric utilities makes to assure rapid and cost-effective implementations based on the criticality of integrated communications to the future of smart grids.
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