Utilities are increasingly using their resources and especially electricity in order to improve their indicators. What's next for this sector?
Utilities are in everyone's sights. The government seeks that these companies provide the best service, with the best quality, to the largest number of inhabitants with increasingly lower costs. The population wants to know how they are investing to improve on various fronts ranging from the provision of the same service to innovative solutions and offers that allow them to improve their quality of life. Finally, the shareholders and owners of these companies, regardless of whether they are public or private, seek profits, which generate profits, while allowing them to invest in innovative and ambitious programs and projects to improve on all fronts.
Jean Pascal Tricoire, president of Schneider Electric, a company specialized in energy management and automation, at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum 2015, in Davos, Switzerland, foresees that "we need to integrate the elements to make them work, the supply chain, productivity and ourselves, (...) we need to be very precise and work fast to make a difference and be very precise with the allies we're going to partner with."
Difficult? The general equation, which is a requirement for all companies, is to do more with less. At the same time, it includes the development of strategies to cover isolated communities, the improvement of the offer of the different public services, the use of automation solutions that ensure the optimal performance of all processes, among others, that constantly improve the condition of service offer. All this, packaged in low carbon emissions, the growing use of alternative energies and improving in terms of the use of standards and metrics that allow the public of interest, to understand how it is investing in this process.
Three global trends add pressure to this equation: Urbanization, since more than half of humans live in cities and in 2050, 66% of the entire population, which will be close to 10 billion, will be urban. The so-called digitization, which implies the evolution towards a culture in which things will connect and interact with each other, without our intervention and in which the generation of information will continue to grow at geometric rates. Finally, industrialization, due to advances such as the Internet of Things, big data and the cloud, among others, we are entering the fourth industrial era, with which in 2050 we will double the current energy consumption, which imposes important challenges on how we are going to provide energy to all industries, especially those of public services to make the mega cities in which we will live comfortable, pleasant and at the same time safe and reliable.
An attractive panorama
One example is the company CPS Energy, based in San Antonio, Texas, and supplier of a large number of homes, companies and cities of both energy and gas. David L. Wood, Director of Utilities Consulting Services at Schneider Electric recently commented, "Today's utilities are under enormous pressure to comply with government regulations and to safely and reliably supply high-quality electricity at a reasonable cost to their customers while facing challenges such as aging grid infrastructure and a decline in experienced workers. We are proud to work with a utility like CPS Energy, which Schneider Electric provides with world-class energy experts to help expand its planning and management capabilities while overcoming challenges such as increasing energy consumption."
For his part, Jean-Pascal Tricoire, in front of the remains left by the COP21 meeting in Paris in December last year, commented on his blog: "Staying ahead of the competition is important in all industries, so with a vision of the future energy producers will continue to be leaders, investing more in the optimization of asset management. Focusing on process automation, digitizing your industry, as well as the renewables and emerging technologies needed to accelerate their availability and integration into the grid will also lead to a better bottom line."
High-impact solutions
One of the first steps is to apply the use of smart grids, renew business models and offer new services to grow beyond its conventional offering. To achieve this, advanced distribution management systems (ADMS) must be applied, a convergent solution that integrates SCADA, DMS, OMS, EMS and DSM functionalities, which becomes an alternative that allows to improve the benefits of Distributed Generation. In this regard, we recommend this document for more detailed information about this model. http://bit.ly/SmaterUtilityWP
In the same way, you can access information on fundamental elements that make networks even more efficient for public services by applying solutions that complement the ADMS offer, such as Struxureware Demand Side Operations, Struxureware Building Management System, among others, which will boost energy and operation management.
Similarly, Schneider Electric has proven solutions in high and medium voltage, to provide power to the plants and networks of the system.
