Reaching 2030 carbon-goals will require transformation of the entire energy sector. Renewable wind and solar will have greater role in electric power generation, existing nuclear plants’ operating life will need to be extended and new advanced nuclear designs will need to be built, hydro plants will have to be upgraded, and electricity will be used in many new areas increasing overall demand. The entire grid will have to be ready to respond as intermittent resources like solar and wind make up a larger percentage of generation. As with everything else, the main change is that change will be happening much faster. (Please see the Low Carbon Research Initiative web page and vision for more information)
Digital transformation is a tool utilities and their suppliers can use to ensure their people, processes, and technology respond quickly and reliably enough to support the grid of the future. All of this transformation must be done securely without impacting the critical generation and distribution of energy
The digital transformation is already underway in other industries and in some parts of the energy grid, providing the experience and technology needed to complete transformation of the energy sector. For example, some utilities now have equipment monitoring and diagnostics (M&D) centers to monitor equipment health and dispatch maintenance in advance of catastrophic failure. Many utilities have shifted from paper-based work packages and procedures to smart tablets for field personnel. Wireless connectivity is becoming more common across the industry.
Digital transformation enables paperless work management, advanced data analytics and artificial intelligence, and more informed operation and maintenance of grid assets from nuclear power plants to end-use distribution panels. For operators, it could be the equivalent of moving from paper maps, along with the burden of having to stop and ask for directions, to a map application on a smart phone. There is tremendous potential not only to increase work efficiency and productivity, but also overall safety and reliability with better and more targeted information.
Data is the driving force behind digital transformation. To have information for better and faster decisions, utilities need data quickly converted to actionable intelligence. They will need to strategically install sensors, connect to the sensors (in some cases with wireless technology), transmit the sensor data to central locations, apply data analytics such as artificial intelligence and other methods, and provide the resulting information to operators and decision makers. Small deviations in performance can be captured sooner, allowing action to be taken before small problems become big ones.
But the digital transformation is not as connected or uniform across the industry as it could be. At many utilities there is not a seamless way to transmit maintenance orders from the M&D center to the field workers – someone is still filling out manual forms in different systems. There are islands of digital transformation, and the opportunity is to build bridges needed to connected for greater effectiveness.
These islands cross the utility and energy industry. Nuclear plants are adopting distributed antenna systems for effective wireless coverage. Grid operators have used the Common Information Model (CIM) to integrate diverse applications by different vendors. Non-nuclear renewable and fossil generation are using digital twins to predict equipment performance and health. However, digital technology does not have to be specific to its use. Each of these areas can learn from and adopt the technology from the other.
To integrate and leverage this diverse work done to date, EPRI has started its Digital Transformation work. EPRI began by acknowledging there is a lot of completed and ongoing technology that can be used for Digital Transformation, but there are also some gaps. One gap is there is not an accepted or widely used industry framework for implementing a digital transformation change initiative or for measuring digital transformation maturity. EPRI worked with its utility members and stakeholders to develop what will become the “Digital Transformation Framework: Utility Strategy & Implementation Guide”, to be published in October 2022. EPRI is also currently identifying digital transformation technical gaps. Some gaps that may need to be addressed include developing value statements or business cases for digital technology and the use of cloud computing in a utility or energy setting. EPRI will also be supporting implementation of digital transformation in the industry with use cases.
EPRI will be starting a Digital Transformation Interest Group (DXIG) in November of 2022. This stakeholder group will help EPRI further define the R&D plan and gaps that need to be addressed. The DXIG will include membership from across all generation types and the energy sector, including the suppler / vendor community.
If you are interested in joining EPRI on this journey, please contact me at [email protected]