Power up: New hot areas for transformation - Part 1

Demand for electrical power in Asian countries is nothing short of staggering; the World Energy Outlook 2013 report by the International Energy Agency (IEA) Non-OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) shows countries in Asia hold the largest share of global growth in primary energy demand at 65%[¹]. Nearly 40% of the world’s new electricity capacity is being shared together by China and India.

These two countries are also the largest importers for oil and coal, respectively. Southeast Asian countries are also seeing an increase in energy needs that are also driven largely by growth in domestic economy and industrial production.

Now, power companies, distributors, and retailers are setting their sights on ensuring that supply meets these demands, especially as expanding industries require better and more resilient energy supply. As stated by See Yoong Hwee who is the Vice President for Process and Innovation at Singapore-based YTL Power Seraya, there are a number of concerns that companies like them have to face.

Among these are energy security, infrastructure protection, and long-term sustainability.

For See, one tool that the company is investing into to achieve these primary goals is technology. Thus, YTL Power Seraya embarked on a major upgrade of their IT infrastructure that included adapting cloud-based applications, and implementing enterprise mobility.

This allowed the company to increase their distribution efficiency, and focus on introducing innovative services.

The changes that happened to YTL Power Seraya are also happening across Asian energy companies. Data on operational efficiency, electricity consumption, and distribution networks are now crucial.

Increasing challenges ahead is pushing these organisations to look into data management tools and techniques to manage and handle big data. Such new measures are gaining mindshare as the basis for new transformational opportunities.

The power industry is no lout when it comes to technology. “Smart” instrumentation has been able to collect and access vast amounts of operational data from devices embedded in their asset infrastructure.

These new technology platforms are now allowing generation, transmission, and retail companies to access this data and transform that data into actionable management information. This is an important new development in an industry facing an extremely competitive environment.

"Real" real time

In the power generation industry, there is a gradual convergence between traditional operations technology or OT and IT. OT solutions have always been based on proprietary solutions that collect vast amounts of data from such devices as remote terminal units and smart meters.

These systems were typically not integrated with other operations or business solutions deployed within the power generation and distribution cycle. In fact, it limited the opportunity to leverage on these data into more widely useable and integrated management information.

Meanwhile, IT was typically associated with back-end functions such as asset management, billing, and revenue collection. But having an IT infrastructure enables a power generation firm to integrate and standardise operations, thereby transforming specific operational areas to deliver increased service at a much lower cost point.

All these depend on utilising big data from OT to improve operational efficiency and improve customer service.

In recent years, new industry-specific big data platforms have emerged to establish the necessary convergence of OT big data and IT discipline. These technologies, as required by stakeholders in the energy sector, ensure gradual adoption of fundamental changes in operations.

These include enabling smarter grid management by predicting what assets are nearing a failure and allowing better electricity load balancing, thus minimising failures and accidents.

Some additional benefits of this new management intelligence resulting from OT/IT Convergence include more effective and lower cost deployment of maintenance workforces; better enabled employees; and smarter grid management and asset optimisation.

[¹] Retrieved from https://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/media/weowebsite/2013/LondonNovember12.pdf

These issues will be discussed in greater detail at the upcoming SAP Asia Pacific Conference for Utilities (20-22 May, 2014, Singapore) with utility companies participating including Towngas, ENN, Shikoku Electric, Maynilad Water, DONG Energy, Malakoff, Meralco, and many more.