Page 40 - European Energy Innovation - Spring 2016 publication

40 Spring 2016 European Energy Innovation

SMART GRIDS

Digitalisation of Energy:
a vision becoming today a reality

By Maher Chebbo, Chairman of the ETP SmartGrids Energy Digitalisation group, Patrick van Hove,
Senior Expert Smart Energy Systems at European Commission DG Research & Innovation and
Prof. Nikos Hatziargyriou, Chairman of the ETP Smartgrids

With the 2020 energy- mobile and/or social media. The system will become much more
climate package and wide roll-out of smart meters and decentralised with a multiplication of
the 2050 energy of related technologies in Europe millions of distributed energy sources
roadmap, Europe has will lead to massive amounts of data and active consumers, many of them
engaged early in the transformation and information that will support the connected to distribution grids.
of its energy system. The EU’s “Energy development of such services, while Customers will increasingly become
Union” strategy and the recent CoP respecting privacy. active and will manage themselves a
21 strengthen the energy policy axes combination of generation, use and
of security of supply, sustainability The energy sector has embraced storage; new use patterns will come
and competitiveness, together with digital technologies for a long time in from electric vehicles and electric
the need to invest in research and the context of technical applications heating; customers will organize
innovation to embrace the necessary such as simulation, modelling for themselves in energy communities.
changes. Digital technologies product design, monitoring, control, New stakeholders such as aggregators
will be an essential ingredient planning, markets, forecasting, and energy service providers will take
of the 21st century low-emission etc. This has allowed the industry increasing roles while new ones will be
energy system, and will support to improve the quality of service required from existing players.
the new panorama of the service- and to reduce costs. Many of these
oriented energy responding to new applications were developed over the The further digitalisation of the energy
expectations of customers, with years as best solutions for particular system will increasingly break the
many new players and new roles for problems and are often isolated in silo- barriers:
existing players. Digital technologies based applications and data.
are also stressed in the EC’s Digital • among silo applications and silo
Single Market strategy. The energy sector is now embracing data sets; building synergies
the major change linked with the between the “back-office” technical
Digital technologies have reshaped transition to a low-emission future, data, information and applications,
the customer views on the services and is faced with a wide range of and the “front-end” link with the
and interactions they will expect major issues. The supply and balance customer.
from “public” service providers of the system will no longer rely on
such as health, transport, energy, large dispatchable power stations, • among business processes;
administration. In the energy sector, but rather on variable renewable improving the ability to embrace
customers of the 21st century will sources that need to be balanced change and facilitate information
likely expect beyond products, high- with a combination of distributed exchange and service composition
quality, personalized services that generation, demand response, among players.
are accessible 24/7 also through storage and interconnections. The
Recently integrated smart grids

Maher Chebbo Patrick van Hove Prof. Nikos Hatziargyriou

www.europeanenergyinnovation.eu