ICT offers smarter alternative to trillion euro grid investment

The CEO of one of Europe’s leading ICT companies, Maingate, will this week argue that ICT has the potential to deliver much of Europe’s smart energy agenda, reducing the need for a potential investment of up to €1 trillion by 2020 to reinforce the grid, and broadening the range of stakeholders who will benefit.

Baard Eilertsen will present a unique perspective on the challenges currently facing the smart grid revolution at the European Utilities Telecom Council annual conference held this week, the largest gathering of telecommunications and utility executives, and their technology partners.

During his keynote presentation, Baard will argue that ICT can enable distributed intelligence, monitoring and control across the electricity grid, and discuss why this is essential if we are to meet the energy demands of the next 20 years.

“Europe cannot afford to spend the trillion euros currently forecast on creating a smart grid, so what can we do to avoid the lights going out?” asks Baard.

“By harnessing the best of telecommunications technologies, machine to machine connectivity and Internet of Things capabilities, it is possible to deliver much of the smart energy agenda without the heavy engineering and costly approach that is typically associated with upgrading the grid.”

The Internet of Things (IoT) is rapidly developing in almost every sector. But while there’s been a lot of talk about how it might function in our homes and businesses, awareness is now growing of the significant role it could play in solving the daunting challenges facing the energy sector.

“Applied to the energy sector, IoT allows all kinds of new solutions and business models that can be alternatives to heavy, costly engineering,” explains Baard.

“It enables demand side response initiatives that defer the need for grid reinforcement; behaviour change programmes to reduce overall energy demand; the integration of energy assets across storage and production so the grid can become self balancing; and the creation of system wide storage facilities to contain peaks in both production and consumption.”

“This approach reduces the CAPEX requirement, improves time to market and actually helps build the business case for investment by spreading the risk and benefits.”

Baard will also refer to the lessons the energy sector can learn from recent evolution in the telecommunications sector, where unbundling has led to significant innovation.

“Experience has shown us that it is possible to move from a heavily-engineered, closed industry to an industry that is open and flexible; an industry that is built around enabling standards; and an industry that is market rather than technology led”.  

Maingate provides Internet of Things capabilities for a smart energy ecosystem by combining machine to machine connectivity with cloud-based data management. The company’s recent projects in the energy sector include conducting Sweden’s largest energy consumption experiment in partnership with E.ON; launching a new initiative to trial consumers’ responses to real time energy prices with Norwegian utility NTE; and a multi-million pound energy efficiency project with UK network operator SSEPD.

Notes to editors

EUTC 2014

EUTC 2014 is the 13^th annual conference of the European Utilities Telecom Council. This year the conference will bring together over 150 telecommunications and utilities professionals in Monaco on 22–24 October to look at beyond 2020 telecommunication strategies for utilities.

Sessions will investigate issues as diverse as cyber security, spectrum allocation, managed operations, telecom and utilities cooperation, and infrastructure implementation, with speakers from European utilities and solutions providers. A session will be dedicated to best practices from other regions of the world, with speakers from USA, Canada and Brasil.

EUTC aims at fostering the dialogue between water, gas and electricity utilities and their telecommunication partners, operators or technology suppliers.

Maingate

Maingate takes 15 years of information and communication technology experience and applies it directly to meeting the challenges of the emerging smart energy sector. We provide end-to-end solutions that combine the aggregation and analysis of energy data with reporting, visualisation and engagement tools. We create flexible systems that are powered by our open standard platform, mvio^TM, giving us the freedom to work with any technology, data stream or third-party software. Working in close collaboration, we support our partners from consultation and hardware selection through to project design and delivery. We currently provide M2M connectivity and information management services to more than 1000 customers across Europe.

Visit www.maingateenergy.com for more information about our work in the smart energy sector and contact:

Alisa Murphy, Life Size Media

+44 (0)203 713 7337, alisa@lifesizemedia.com

Visit www.maingatesolutions.com for more information about our company and contact:

Marcus Lannerbro, EVP Partner Strategy & Marcom

+46 70 320 13 25, marcus.lannerbro@maingatesolutions.com

”This news was originally posted on www.maingatesolutions.com”