It has been said that in business and technology, the only constant is change. This is especially true in today’s utility industry. What was once centralized is now distributed. The role of the customer is being turned on its head. Any assumptions about a stable regulatory environment are becoming things of the past.
Given this new energy environment, how can utility leaders position their organizations to have the resiliency that will enable their companies to deliver reliable, affordable, safe, and sustainable utility services over the long term? To start the process, you should consider the drivers in today’s utility market that make resiliency among leaders and their teams a must.
First is the regulatory climate. Policies that used to take years to develop and were unchanged for years, or maybe even decades, are now being developed and executed more fluidly. Rapidly changing regulatory and legislative demands often result in policies that are not only developed quickly, but might also change abruptly due to changing requirements and shifting politics. With utility projects and initiatives that often take years to roll out, resiliency becomes difficult to achieve with new regulatory conditions.
Public sentiment is another challenge. Customer expectations have changed from the basics, such as needing to pay a bill once per month and minimizing outages, to modern desires as diverse as demand response, expanded services including EV charging programs, and new energy products such as smart thermostats. There is also the growing expectation that the utility will be their advisor for what can appear to be an uncertain energy future.
A third driver is the changing demographics of the utility workforce. Not only are retirements from the Baby Boomer and Gen X generations causing high turnover, but newer, younger workers bring different expectations around working conditions and the use of technology. Resiliency – and flexibility – in dealing with these changing demographics will help stabilize a shifting work environment.
What should utility leaders do to maintain resiliency during these challenging times? To start, they should act with a sense of urgency. Recent public comments from Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) leaders underscore the need for urgent actions from utility leaders. FERC Commissioner James Danly said: “There is a looming reliability crisis in our electricity markets.” FERC Commissioner Mark Christie said: “The United States is heading for a very catastrophic situation in terms of reliability.” Utility leaders need to build energy generation and delivery infrastructure – including a shift to distributed energy resources – that will meet customer needs, from base load to peaking events.
Even in light of these challenges, there is reason for optimism. New technology and skilled partners can help utilities make a big leap forward and meet energy needs in this new operating environment, but utility leaders need to act as soon as possible.
One example of how technology and trusted partners can make this leap is by leveraging digital twins, which are realistic and dynamic digital representations of the current state of physical assets and systems. Brad Johnson, a senior product portfolio manager for energy delivery at Bentley Systems, said digital twins are important for today’s utility operations. “A digital twin platform provides the ability to put all the old legacy assets and systems, as well as new solutions, into a new context,” he said. “Being able to visualize systems holistically in the real-time to near real-time environment of a digital twin provides actionable insights that were not possible just a few years ago.”
As an example of how a digital twin can change the game, consider how utility systems and the data they generate are typically siloed – asset data is in one or more systems, customer data is in the CIS, geolocation is in yet another, and so on. These systems are never in full context with each other, even where there is some level of interface or integration.
A digital twin brings all data together in a single view of truth, enabling visualization and analysis that can anticipate challenges. As a result, the digital twin creates significant opportunities for business improvement that can include increased reliability, more efficient crew dispatch, better asset utilization, improved safety, and improved financial performance. It is also noteworthy that as sensor deployments increase and data collection improves, the possibilities for improvements expand quickly with use cases that can encompass power quality, predictive maintenance, and improved storm preparedness and restoration.
It is no surprise to utility leaders that these are unprecedented times for an industry charged with providing affordable, safe, reliable, and now sustainable energy. The challenges are steep, but the new capabilities for meeting these challenges are equipping leaders and their teams to continue in the grand tradition of an industry that has consistently met challenges with innovation, deep skill sets, sweat, and resiliency for over 130 years.
For more insight on how a digital twin can help create more resiliency in your utility, go here.