With much of the attention in the utilities space focused on moving forward to smart grids, including smart metering, utilities companies – whether in the retail or distribution business – have some major data challenges ahead. Freya Purnell reports.
In pockets around Australia, progress is being made towards installing smart grids equipped with smart meters or advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), as it is otherwise known.
The leader in this space is Victoria, with the government mandating that digital electricity meters, or ‘smart meters’ should be installed in all Victoria households and small business by the end of 2013. Representing the most significant investment in Victoria’s electricity network since the introduction of poles and wires, the program is expected to bring numerous benefits, such as better access to real-time electricity consumption information, remote meter reading, and faster connections and disconnections. While the project hit a snag earlier in the year due to concerns that the meters installed were unsafe after a series of problems reported by consumers, a government review found that the meters were safe and that the rollout should continue.
Elsewhere, Australia’s first commercial-scale smart grid is being created under the auspices of the Smart Grid, Smart City project, which is part of the Australian Government’s National Energy Efficiency Initiative. A smart grid combines advanced communication, sensing and metering infrastructure with the existing electricity network, which could improve reliability of electricity services by identifying and resolving faults on the electricity grid, better managing voltage and identifying infrastructure that requires maintenance. They can also help consumers manage their individual electricity consumption and enable the use of energy-efficient ‘smart applicances’ that can be programmed to run on off-peak power.
Ausgrid is working with consortium partners IBM Australia, GE Energy Australia, Sydney Water, Hunter Water, and Newcastle City Council to deliver the project, which is primarily based in Newcastle. The project, which commenced in October 2010 and will run until September next year, aims to gather information about the costs and benefits of smart grids to help inform future decisions by government, electricity providers, technology suppliers and consumers across Australia. The Australian Government has committed up to $100 million for the project.
As part of this project, last year IBM successfully implemented a first-of-its-kind smart grid data management platform, designed and built with Ausgrid. This enabled more data to be relayed from the grid to the utility, creating a foundation for better monitoring and asset management for the distribution network, improving information on outages.
The platform involves rolling out 12,000 intelligent monitoring devices in distribution substations across the network, with the data collected centrally to provide a holistic view of parts of the electrical network across the company’s electricity grid.
David Jones, IBM’s smart grid program director, said at the time of the announcement in July last year, that information generated by smart grid technology will help Ausgrid optimise its planning functions, asset management and capital investments into the future. Western Australia has also seen its fair share of ‘smart’ activity, including the Living Smart Household Program as part of the Perth Solar City initiative. Consortium partner Synergy has implemented smart meters as part of the program, which, building on success in the initial trial area, has now been extended to all residents in the Perth metropolitan region. Water Corporation has been undertaking a smart metering trial in Kalgoorlie-Boulder, due to be completed in June this year, with 13,500 residential and commercial water meters replaced and connected to the online network. Water Corporation estimated that by monitoring consumption on an hourly basis, leaks would be more readily identified, and water use in the region could be reduced by 12 per cent or more than one billion litres per year.
Managing big data volumes
With the move towards digitally controlled ‘smart’ operations, there is a clear need for supporting IT infrastructure. Perhaps more crucially for SAP, smart grids and smart metering also produce seriously big data – and that’s where technologies such as in-memory database SAP HANA come into play.
The smart metering process works by recording energy usage at certain intervals throughout the day, and communicating the data back to electricity distributors. This information is then used to generate network usage charges for each of the premises, with readings and charges passed on to retailers to charge customers.
Scott Hirst, utilities industry principal for SAP Australia, says as different technologies go through trials and are proven in the utilities sector, clearing the way for more significant roll-outs, some common issues are coming to the surface.
“For instance, in Victoria, a lot of organisations now have very immediate priorities around trying to handle big data. That’s both retailers and the distribution companies looking at not only how do they cope with storing and managing the data, but also how do you analyse that and try to turn it into competitive advantage or something you can derive cost savings and efficiencies from,” Hirst says.
While he believes we are unlikely to see a smart meter roll-out as extensive as has been undertaken in Victoria elsewhere in Australia in the medium term, there is activity around smart grids is gathering steam, both in Australia and elsewhere in the world. Again, big data will result from having more intelligent components in the grid providing a real-time feedback loop.
“That’s where HANA can provide a really strong solution to support a whole range of scenarios such as network planning, network tariff modelling, and forecasting,” Hirst says. “What we are seeing is a lot of organisations starting to accumulate this data, and the next challenge for them is to drive value out of that data. The big difference between HANA and other solutions on the market is that it is inherently flexible to support emerging requirements over time.”
While utility companies can gain a lot of insights through simply collecting and analysing this data – for example, doing sophisticated analytics on networking planning and infrastructure, and how investments in new infrastructure can be best targeted over time –where HANA could add value is in allowing retailers to act on that information.
“For instance, in Victoria at the moment, there are very few customers actually being billed on the time of use information. They are still getting billed in a very traditional way – their usage for a quarter,” Hirst says. An emerging field is demand response – that is, managing consumption patterns. For distributors, helping customers avoid peak consumption times means they don’t have to build as big a network, while for retailers, it helps them avoid having to procure energy at spot prices in the market.
“It can also help to drive segmentation activities for the retailer so that they can target customers with the most appropriate energy products, or even target customers over time with offers or behavioural changes so that they can save money on their energy usage,” Hirst says.
In addition to the move towards smart technologies, significant structural changes in the electricity generation market is also creating impetus for
technology spend.
“If there are initiatives that are bankable business cases, then there is a strong appetite for companies to go after those efficiency gains,” Hirst says.
While SAP was not able to reveal which Australian utilities customers are seriously considering deploying SAP HANA, companies such as AGL and CitiPower/ Powercor have already completed proof of concept work.
“There is definitely activity underway. What we are also seeing is that HANA works very well in or enables very rapid concept activities, and we are seeing a lot of organisations experimenting using HANA – again helping to underpin some of those business cases to justify the investment going forward,” Hirst says.
Carbon tax driving investment
With the formal introduction of the carbon tax, some of the traditional generators have been impacted and are suffering from capital constraints.
“What we are also seeing is that a lot of these organisations are now very conscious about coming up with an efficient and sustainable way to track their carbon emissions,” Hirst says. “So we are seeing a second wave of interest in activity in the carbon emission tracking and accounting space, and doing that as a part of business as usual, as opposed to simply a compliance activity.”
For this purpose, companies are typically favouring the SAP Environmental Compliance solution, which measures all types of emissions.
“We are seeing a lot of interest in that because it is very robust. You can handle all types of emissions, and it can integrate to your ERP suite,”Hirst says. “With the carbon tax now being formalised, a lot of organizations are sitting up and taking notice, and integrating this into their ERP solution has become a very important factor.”
This article was first published in the Inside SAP Winter Edition 2012.
