How the Internet of Things improves the world we live in
Sustainable Electricity Supply
The application of the industrial Internet of Things (iIoT) has the power to shape the future.
The “Smart Grid” aims to supply electricity with highest possible reliability and efficiency. It makes use of industrial IoT technologies along the electrical supply chain. Thereby enabling a grid which is fit for the future.
ProductionLong distance supplyLocal and municipal supplyHousehold consumption
Challenges
Growing Population
An improved access to basic resources and medical care drives the global population growth. Its long-term projected increase lies around 1.1% p.a..
Growing Electricity Demand
The population increase and incline of prosperity cause also a rising energy demand. Forecasts project an 28% increase from 2015–2040. The biggest share of energy goes to electricity generation. Electricity generation is likely to increase by 40% of total energy usage by 2040. It will mostly be used to drive electric motors and household appliances.
New Energy Sources
Protecting the environment requires us to rethink the generation and distribution of electricity. Electricity from renewable sources and low carbon emission fuels are on the rise. But still 77% of electricity is expected to come from fossil fuels in 2040.
But today’s grid is not yet prepared for a change from centralized to a decentralized generation and storage of electricity. As of today, in some cases a local household feed-in is possible. Yet, the top-level infrastructure is not designed to accommodate feed-in on a large scale.
With micro-plants and home energy storage solutions on the rise, this becomes an important factor going into the future.
Inefficiencies
A common inefficiency with centralized power generation are transmission losses. The transport of generated power over long distances, causes energy losses.
Common U.S. grid losses amount to ~5% of generated electricity (on average, 2012–2016).
Resiliency
The current infrastructure can be quite brittle. Which means that weather and natural disasters can cause stressful power outages and high repair cost.
According to a report by the White House, the annual damages inflicted by these effects account to $18–33 billion US in the years between 2003 and 2012. With hurricane Katrina accounting for up to $50 billion US).
Solutions
Data Collection
To meet the challenges in current grids, we need an installation of data sources which can feed into the analytics and prediction models. One ongoing initiative is the deployment and installation of Smart Meters for electricity.
They are either equipped with one-way or two-way communication capabilities. With two-way communication, they are able to measure, analyze and communicate with the central control system. Global rollout started in the 2000s with over 350m deployed in Europe by 2009.
Further spots along the grid use load measuring sensors and switch actuators. This is an important factor to gather data and control the distribution.
Decentralization
The next step towards a smart grid, able to tackle future’s challenges is the decentralized creation and storage of energy.
“Micro-generation” becomes affordable and more convenient. It takes the form of small solar panels, wind generators and Geo-thermal energy generation. It reduces the distance between generator and consumer, and as a result, the grid’s losses and load. With decentralized power generation, a local power storage becomes important. It is installed to buffer energy between its generation and consumption.
Household energy storage is available in the form of of maintenance-free sealed batteries. Many manufacturers of electric vehicles are now offering home energy storage solution. This is often an initiative to give the vehicle batteries a “second life”. The local power generation and storage connect to both, the grid and the internet. Making them important nodes in the smart grid.
Energy storage can also work on municipal level, for example in form of pumped storage hydroelectricity. reduces the reliance on the extra-municipal grid.
Distribution
The routing of electricity is an important task for a stable supply. It can be automated to reduce the impact of unforeseen grid damages and spikes in power demand.
With data driven models, power routing becomes more agile. Predicted demand spikes and outages trigger backup plants to power up. This is sometimes called the “self-healing” property of the grid.
Levelling
To smooth demand spikes, the energy industry employs so-called peak pricing. It makes use of variable pricing for electricity during high demand times. With demand prediction, proactive pricing becomes the reality.
Benefits Summary
Enhanced grid reliability and resiliency uses distributed supply, storage and smart fault detection. In case of disaster, accidents or attacks on the grid, it can react autonomously to ensure high up-time.
Decentralized energy feed-in points allow for the integration of sustainable future energy sources. This is driven also by enabling local energy management (on home or municipal level).
Grid efficiency relies on automatic load balancing and proactive peak pricing. Also, by reducing the way of energy transmission, the losses can be reduced.
Final thoughts
Many initiatives are ongoing in Europe and the US, but also global approaches are in place. Smart grid technology allows to install small scale energy systems, supplying small communities i.e. in rural areas.The potential for smart grids is especially high in developing or growth countries.
The benefit lies in a higher reliability of infrastructure. Making it possible to support high growth of population and electricity demand.With the democratization of energy generation and supply, also new business models emerge. For example, a smart local installation uses solar panels and a private energy storage. This can provide a private-to-community service. By the power supply on short notice during peak times and by supporting the continuous grid frequency correction (US: 50–60 Hz).
Daniel Sontag connects the bots:
As Industry 4 lead and manager for connected products, he does what he loves — tying business to tech, and theory to practice.
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