THE ENERGY INDUSTRY TIMES - OCTOBER 2017
road worker needs to know where
cabling is located. “There are endless
applications and we have seen a lot of
interest from utilities in this area,”
Mortier commented.
At the same time, enabling technologies
or ‘liquid applications’ allow
solutions to be developed at a faster
pace than ever before.
“If you wanted to develop a product
or technology solution, in the past it
would have taken six months or
maybe a year, with significant cost
and extensive testing,” explained
Mortier. “The new way of composing
applications, based on variable applications
already on the market, allows
development cycles of 10-12 weeks
for apps.”
Mortier believes Fog computing
will be increasingly important. “Unlike
Cloud computing – where the
computing capacity is in a centralised
place but is available everywhere – in
Fog computing, the computing capacity
is distributed in nodes or devices
throughout the network.
“It’s at an early stage but is very
relevant for the electricity industry
because, like distribution, it is distributed
by nature. Where there are millions
of meters, data aggregation is a
big challenge – how do you bring all
this data back to an entity to make a
decision on it? Technologies such as
Fog computing and blockchain are
also distributed by nature and therefore
match well with the physical
electron world.”
Indeed Mortier sees the future of
the electricity sector as being distributed
and much more “peer-to-peer
enabled”, where individuals will be
much more in control of their own
electricity generation, consumption
and storage.
He concluded: “You will see the
role of the central authority, i.e. the
utility, being increasingly questioned.
Blockchain technology will enable
that and AI will automate some of the
decision-making. Good examples,
such as Brooklyn Microgrid, already
exist.”
Projecting forward, if such solutions
become widespread as the enabling
technologies become ubiquitous, it is
entirely possible that the utility as we
know it may disappear. But this does
not mean the future is bleak for utilities;
it will just be different.
There is no reason why utilities may
not use these same technologies to
move into other areas such as electromobility,
providing services they
might never have imagined.
The energy sector of the not too
distant future will look significantly
different from today.
According to DNV GL’s recently
published Energy Transition Outlook,
renewable energy sources will continue
to rise, making up nearly half
of global energy supply by 2050. At
the same time, energy efficiency will
improve faster than global economic
growth due to the rapid electrification
of the world’s energy system, leading
to a plateau in energy demand from
2030.
The report speaks of a “profound
change” that will have significant
implications for both established
and new energy companies. Launching
the report, Remi Eriksen, Group
President and CEO of DNV GL
noted: “Ultimately, it will be a willingness
to innovate and a capability
to move at speed that will determine
who is able to remain competitive in
this dramatically altered energy
landscape.”
Innovation, however, is driven by
technology and energy companies
will need to get a handle on which
technologies are likely have the
greatest impact on the sector and
their businesses.
Commenting on the big technology
waves, EY notes that different technologies
will create different opportunities
and stresses that there are
several key technologies that are
beginning to straddle multiple industrial
sectors.
Thierry Mortier, EY Global Power
& Utilities Innovation Leader said:
“While obviously there are things
like solar and battery technologies
that are clearly disrupting the industry,
there are important innovations
going on in transportation and telecommunications
that are triggering
convergence of the energy industry
with other industries.”
EY identifies six mega trends or
emerging technology areas that are
the key elements in facilitating the
energy transition – Artificial Intelligence
(AI); Robotics; Blockchain;
‘New Dimensions’ (e.g. 3D printing,
augmented reality and virtual reality);
Internet of Things (IoT); and
enabling technologies, which EY
calls ‘Liquid Applications’ (e.g.
Cloud and Fog computing).
Roll-out of these transformational
technologies will depend on the
technology itself as well as geography
but it is clear that deployment of prototypes
or new applications in the
energy sector is under way.
“We see pockets of activity across
the globe, mostly centred around
Europe, the US and also nowadays,
the Middle East... All of the big utilities
are actively working on some of these
topics, with pretty big investment
programmes,” said Mortier
“If you ask me which of these will
be the next big wave, I would bet on
artificial intelligence. We are seeing
a fair amount of utility interest, with
AI often being quoted as the new
digital.”
He added: “Blockchain is probably
the most disruptive of the technologies.
It is a bit immature but it is disruptive
since it eliminates the central
authority in a lot of transactions and
interactions between players in the
market... now that blockchain is getting
over the hype, a lot of utilities
have their prototypes now in place.”
Explaining the “hype” around
blockchain, Mortier says: “When
people ‘discover’ a new technology,
initially they can imagine all sorts of
applications and there is a lot of excitement
that it will immediately be
disruptive. But people have discovered
that there are still a lot of barriers
to successful wide-scale implementation
– there are legal constraints. But
because the initial excitement is over,
that does not mean it will not be very
impactful or very meaningful. It just
means that there has been a realitycheck
and it will now go down the
normal maturity curve.”
EY believes that the full force of
disruption to the energy industry will
be unleashed when all of these technologies
come together. “There are
two important elements that we keep
in sight when following these trends:
first, is the pace of development and
when they will mature; second, is the
collision of these technologies because
they do not stand on their own.”
EY has examples of how technologies
such as AI, blockchain and drones
can be combined. At its Experience
Lab in Paris, it has designed a prototype
solution to maintain and inspect
solar panels. When the efficiency of
the panels decreases, based on measurements
of the productivity of the
solar panels, a message is sent out on
the blockchain to indicate that there
might be a problem. This is picked up
by an inspection engine, which sends
a drone to take a picture of the solar
panel. AI then uses image recognition
to assess the state of the panel. If it
needs to be cleaned, an inspection
order is sent out on the blockchain,
which is picked up by the service
company doing the maintenance. After
maintenance, the drone is sent out
again to take another picture. If the
image is fine, the payment to the service
company is made automatically
through the blockchain.
“This demonstrates that very complex
processes can be managed
through the use of these components,
but they must be considered together,”
noted Mortier.
He cited another example, which
also illustrates why he believes AI
will be the next big thing. According
to Mortier, AI’s potential to increase
energy efficiency and its ability to
support the development of new services
is now being realised. For example,
Singapore-based start-up
BeeBryte provides a service that uses
AI, delivered through the Cloud, to
help buildings use less electricity and
become smarter.
Assuming the building has a solar
panel and a battery, AI and machine
learning techniques use electricity
market information, weather forecasts,
fuel consumption patterns, etc.,
to make the arbitrage as to whether
the building owner should produce,
sell, or store electricity.
“This is a key example, because it
encapsulates a couple of key elements,”
Mortier observed. “It’s an
outside company – basically a startup
– using all the new technologies
that are available to provide a new
service at a reasonable cost. It’s a
dedicated service that is fully automated
through a digital gateway,
which is the smart meter.”
In yet another example, Google and
National Grid of the UK are working
together where deep learning techniques
are being used to identify
electricity consumption patterns at
Google’s data centres in order to reduce
electricity costs.
Case studies such as these show
there is great potential for technologies
such as AI throughout electricity
market value chain – from generation,
through to transmission, distribution,
electricity trading, etc.
Looking at the other key mega
trends, 3D printing is increasingly
being applied in manufacturing. In
terms of new products, it makes it
possible to quickly produce prototypes
of new component designs for
testing, such as is now being seen in
the gas turbine business. There is also
now the possibility to print spare parts
as they are needed, eliminating the
need to hold those parts in stock or
have them delivered from factories –
useful at offshore drilling platforms.
There is also interesting research
work under way at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (MIT) in the
US, where 3D printing is being used
to produce solar panels, with impressive
initial results. “At this stage there
have been amazing results, with a
factor of 10 increase in efficiency due
to the shapes that can be produced,”
said Mortier.
Augmented reality (AR) and virtual
reality (VR) are also becoming more
prevalent. VR is proving its value in
training, while AR could be useful,
for example, where an engineer or
14 Energy Outlook
As the energy sector
shifts to a market
that will see low
carbon, sustainable
energy sources
generating electricity
in an increasingly
distributed set-up,
there are several
technologies that
will have a huge
impact in terms
of both facilitating
the transition and
disrupting the
industry, as we know
it. Junior Isles
EY has identified six mega trends or emerging technology areas
A glimpse of the future
Mortier: the full force of
disruption will be unleashed when
technologies come together