Bonjour, Voici la revue de presse IoT/data/energie du 4 mars 2017. Cette semaine au programme :
- The Disruption And Global Transformation Of The Energy Industry
- How ENEL is using IoT to embrace the ‘energy revolution’
- IBM, VELCO join forces to create smart energy solutions firm Utopus
- How IIoT is revolutionizing utilities
- How energy-data-as-a-service is enabling innovation
- Renewable energy IoT to hit $5.3 billion annually by 2030
A lire le court article sur ENEL.
Je suis preneur d'autres artices / sources !
Bonne lecture !
1. Revue de presse IoT / Data du 04/03/2017
Bonjour,
Voici la revue de presse IoT/data/energie du 4 mars 2017.
Je suis preneur d'autres artices / sources !
Bonne lecture !
1. The Disruption And Global Transformation Of The Energy Industry
2. How ENEL is using IoT to embrace the ‘energy revolution’
3. IBM, VELCO join forces to create smart energy solutions firm Utopus
4. How IIoT is revolutionizing utilities
5. How energy-data-as-a-service is enabling innovation
6. Renewable energy IoT to hit $5.3 billion annually by 2030
The Disruption And Global
Transformation Of The Energy Industry
Source URL: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-energy-industry-disruption-and-
global-transformation_us_58b428dbe4b0658fc20f97d9
02/27/2017 08:39 am ET | Updated 4 days ago
A. Fornwald
The world’s energy utilities are being shocked and rocked by the most radical
transformations in their history.
Co-Authored by Andreas Fornwald, CEO Grünwald Technologies & Sloan MBA
The first hit was the computer mainframe industry in the 1980s, then the conventional
camera business of the 1990s was transmogrified followed by the telecommunication
industry in the 2000s: and now it is the turn of the electric power utilities to take their
place on the anvil of technological and societal change. These behemoths are forced to
radically reshape themselves or face extinction.
Utility companies for power generation and power transmission have more than 100 years
of history and millions, sometimes up to 50 million, customers. Now they are arguably
experiencing the biggest challenge to their existence ever. Many will not survive.
The energy industry is rapidly changing: power generation is no longer a straightforward
business, complexity is becoming overwhelming, and many top executives can not cope
with this new situation. Radical transformations are progressing or will come. The Smart
2. Grid wave is still ongoing. The Internet of Things (IoT) is rapidly developing, sophisticated
Demand & Response software is coming, and Predictive Energy Consumption
Logarithms, which should be in place by the end of 2017 will shape the Power Generation
and Power Distribution industry as much as the robotization revolutionized the car
industry.
Some experts and pundits predict the end of the power generation and power distribution
giants and the fragmentation of the industry. We believe that this will not happen; the
future of power generation and distribution will be shaped by global service providers that
will bundle the utility business and provide significant add-on value to customers. These
new energy companies will become the Google and Facebook of an utterly transformed
utility business.
Some experts and pundits predict the end of the power generation and
power distribution giants and the fragmentation of the industry.
Currently, many utilities are struggling. This phenomenon is very visible in Germany where
the two big players – E.ON and RWE ― instead of focusing on customer service, divided
their assets and created huge liabilities for taxpayers.
The challenges facing energy utilities include:
1. Electrical consumption per capita is falling for the first time in history. More efficient
electrical energy usage, improved devices with less energy consumption are impacting
industrial and residential consumption.
2. The energy supply is diversified, and the increasing efficiency of renewables is driving
many independent power producers to feed electricity into the grid. More and diverse
power of various quality, with different environmental impacts, is produced. No power
source is comparable to another, and every power source has to be treated in a very
special and proprietary way.
3. The grid cannot match demand and is far more difficult to control as it has many of
bidirectional players.
4. Grid operators are split between efficiency, low costs and accepting various inputs
from very diverse players, ranging from nuclear power plants to solar panels.
5. Various technologies are fiercely competing for power generation and power
transmission.
6.IoT and ERP are playing a large part in operations. However, the integration of new
internet technologies is not the biggest challenge; the biggest challenge is how to make
employees use them properly and efficiently.
7. The share of renewable energy is growing and will soon reach 30-40% of total energy
production. These intermittent sources have their own industry-specific challenges.
8. The diversity of renewable energy is increasing, and almost every source has different
technical characteristics and uses new technologies which have to be quickly understood
by utility staffs.
3. 9.Utility company’s customers have become pro-active, and many of them have the
ability to produce their own electrical power and feed it to the grid. Consumers become
“prosumers” and the electrical grid becomes bi-directional, like a social media network.
10. Internationalization strategies which were once done by acquisitions rather than by
cooperation with local partners, now need to be adapted to change strategies for
cooperation with various local and global organizations. Utilities have to work closer with
Independent Power Producers (IPP), with communities as well as with NGO’s,
governments, local and global suppliers, etc. This complexity overreach echoes the
United Nations.
11. State ownership will challenge the internationalization of the industry, and some
stakeholders will probably question investments abroad because they are risky. The need
for internationalization has to be better advocated and convincingly argued to resonate
with policy-makers in order to move forward.
12. The utility industry workforce is very attached to their home bases and not mobile. It is
extremely difficult to bring them around and to help them think and act globally.
13. The diversification of regulatory risk is another challenge. As politics becomes more
populist, less rational, a less utility-friendly approach may be taken by governments and
authorities. The new breed of global utility managers will have to cope with fresh demands
from local and national governments and to learn to react to “meddling” politicians.
14. The handling of decentralized assets will change and utilities will need to share assets
with other companies to develop joint projects with different players. With decentralized
energy, the scale changes as does workforce qualifications and the revenues structure.
Moreover, setting up small energy generating units is more labor intensive than building
and operating big plants.
15. The management of data and big data will pay a crucial role for future utilities. Data
will be by far the utilities’ greatest asset. Data and information regarding customer
behavior and assets will be vital in order to streamline operations, and will be critical in
defining the competitive advantage of each utility.
16. Monitoring new entrants and their business models in order to develop defense
strategies or/and strategies to prevent the effects of disruptive innovations. The future
utility market will abound in disruptive innovations.
17.Utilities will be crucially faced with the continuous improvement of its algorithms,
business models and dealing with rapid change.
18. Defining and shaping a more customer-centric approach and experimenting with new
approaches to developing a customer base will be a defining factor for competing utilities.
19. Interaction with other utilities will also define day to day business. More non-utility
companies will enter the market and provide various service alliances between
telecommunication companies, software companies and utilities.
20. Reversing classic utility inertia in deploying new technologies and new assets based
on bottom-up approaches, while focusing on today’s unpredictable and unstable
regulatory environment.
4. An example: the German market with its 590 billion euros sales revenue, is the biggest in
Europe. The Big 4 ― RWE, E.ON, Waterfall and EnBW ― amount for 74% of the market.
However, their share is sharply declining, some 1.5 million corporations and individuals
produce energy; this number is growing fast.
For utilities to survive, adapt and prosper, they must attract dynamic and
modern-thinking managers and executives from various industries related to
power generation, transmission and distribution.
All the challenges above and the extraordinary complexity of today’s utilities market are
forcing companies to leave old patterns behind and to entirely rebuild their operations.
Utility companies need to reinvent themselves and travel down the path of diversification
and efficiency in today’s tumultuous globalized market.
For utilities to survive, adapt and prosper, they must attract dynamic and modern-thinking
managers and executives from various industries related to power generation,
transmission and distribution. Post-heroic leadership in a complex, fast-changing and
agile environment is crucial. Defining their role in the internet based, highly inter-
dependent world is a matter of survival for utilities.
To manage these momentous challenges, transformations, threats and opportunities,
utilities need managers who are able to work simultaneously with large, sophisticated
organizations but also able to communicate with small departments with a start-up
culture. Future utility managers should also be able to bind the innovative and
entrepreneurial culture of Silicon Valley with the hierarchical structures of a large
corporation. Managers need to possess bold and creative ideas as they bring a diverse
corporate culture to their employees without leaving anybody behind ― to successfully
navigate the radically changing energy market.
How ENEL is using IoT to embrace the
‘energy revolution’
Source URL: https://internetofbusiness.com/energy-enel-iot-revolution/
By Alexandra Brown
February 28, 2017
Q: How is Enel embracing the opportunity of IoT?
A: Enel is among the first large players that have shifted to become a cloud-based
company and develop new services for our end consumers. The digitalization of assets
with IoT technologies is one of our main areas of investment, focusing on networks,
renewable generation and conventional generation of power. We aim to digitize most of
our assets by the end of 2019. For our retail customers, Enel has launched a smart home
platform, named GoodLife in Italy and Nexo in Spain. These platforms deliver not only
smart home automation, but a comprehensive list of new services to make lives easier.
Q: What can you tell us about how electric vehicles fit into this wider picture?
5. A: Enel launched the first commercial vehicle-to-grid (V2G) hub in Denmark in late August
last year, which is now fully up and running. An additional revenue stream will be provided
by using car batteries to provide balancing services to the grid. V2G, we believe, could
entirely shift the paradigm of the energy business, putting customers at the centre and
enabling reductions in vehicle total cost of ownership, for instance by reducing monthly
leasing fees or providing free recharges.
Q: You’ve partnered with Nissan – how did you come to choose that company as
your partner?
A: Nissan is among the most important car manufacturers, having sold the highest
number of electric vehicles worldwide. Moreover, it has been a frontrunner in the field of
V2G and shares Enel’s strong commitment to innovation. We signed the strategic
partnership with Nissan at COP21 in Paris. V2G is the key pillar of this alliance, but the
partnership could expand to other e-mobility collaborations. For example, we have jointly
launched an EV bundle offer for taxi drivers. And in Italy, we’ve developed a bundle offer
called e-GO, to facilitate the EV buying experience and boost market uptake of EVs.
Q: And how do you see the role of electric utilities changing as part of the wider
trend towards IoT-enabled smart cities?
A: Enel is among the first large players that shifted to a cloud-based approach, with the
aim of building an open-platform ecosystem with connectors to other systems. This helps
to bring in other technologies such as big data, artificial intelligence and interactions
between different IoT services. This IT layer is what makes the concept of ‘smartness’
real. What we expect from future grid digitalization is an explosion in the number of
connected, power-consuming devices and smart sensors in the power grid. This
explosion, in turn, will dramatically change citizens’ perspectives, in terms of seeing
themselves as active participants in the energy market and in terms of how experiencing
how widespread connectivity supports new ‘shared-economy’ services. This approach
extends to include commercial and industrial customers, institutions and cities at large,
where asset digitalization, connections and data collection will provide new services to
enhance quality of living in cities.
Q: How important will renewable energy be in future and how will it impact our cities
and transport networks?
A: Energy systems will rely more and more on renewable generation, to the extent that
renewables will reach ‘grid parity’. In some cases, it already has. That said, strategies for
decarbonization have to be combined with renovation of the power system. Future cities
will be ‘fully’ electric, and both public and private transportation will take an active role in
power flow management, so that vehicles act as mobile electrical storage systems to
allow the maximum hosting capacity for local, unpredictable renewable sources.
Q: Enel has said it wants to be a ‘veritable smart company’ – what does that mean
and how is the company working to achieve its goal?
A: What we observe is an energy revolution, moving at speed as technology evolves, and
a revolution in the behavior of customers, too. It is changing the business fundamentals of
the power industry. Enel is naturally open to all forms of innovation happening in our
industry and in other sectors. In the end, the potential of digital can be fully captured if
transformation is embraced by all functions and incorporated into value chains and
6. processes. So we see digitalization as an opportunity to become a veritable smart
company through the redesign of business models, through changes to processes,
culture and people, by using an end-to-end approach and keeping an open mind.
ENEL will be speaking about the ‘Uberization’ of the energy industry at the Internet of
Energy conference in Cologne, Germany, 7-8 March 2017.
IBM, VELCO join forces to create smart
energy solutions firm Utopus
Source URL: http://www.zdnet.com/article/ibm-velco-join-forces-to-create-smart-
energy-solutions-firm-utopus/
By Charlie Osborne for Between the Lines | February 27, 2017 -- 08:27 GMT (08:27 GMT)
IBMand Vermont Electric Power Company (VELCO) have announced the creation of
Utopus Insights, a company which will specialize in smart energy products.
On Friday, the companies revealed that Utopus Insights, based in Valhalla, New York, will
"strive to be a leading provider of the next generation of intelligent energy solutions."
The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Founded in 1956, Rutland, Vermont-based VELCO is an electric transmission company
which transforms power from substations to lower voltage local customers in Vermont.
VELCO, owned by in-state electric distribution companies, will be an investor and
strategic partner in the new company, while IBM Research's Smarter Energy team --
alongside the unit's intellectual property and technologies portfolio -- will become part of
Utopus Insights.
IBM and VELCO hope the new venture will be able to create "create dependable,
industry-tested software" which utilizes Big Data and analytics for the green energy
market.
Dr. Chandu Visweswariah, an IBM fellow, has been named President and CEO of Utopus
Insights. The executive says that as the renewable energy sector continues to innovate --
now including energy storage, electric vehicles, smart, energy-saving products, and
renewables -- vendors need to move quickly to keep up.
By harnessing IBM's portfolio, the company will be able to offer an energy analytics
platform from the outset for use with the cloud (SaaS) and IoT solutions, which can also
be integrated with third-party software due to the use of open APIs.
See also: Cloud-to-client, direct: serverless computing reduces the middle
"Utopus Insights plans to bring these same solutions to other utilities' ongoing grid
transformation work," Tom Dunn, VELCO President, and CEO said. "These next-
generation tools can enable our industry to continue to deliver increased system reliability
7. and operational performance in an era of rapid change."
"Utopus Insights will combine an established team of experts in energy analytics and
optimization, software engineering and deep utility knowledge to offer new insights, tools
and customer savings to grid customers," the executive added.
The new venture will launch in the first quarter of 2017.
Earlier this month, IBM announced a new partnership with Northern Trust to develop
blockchain technologies suitable for use in the private equity funds market.
How IIoT is revolutionizing utilities
Source URL: http://social.techcrunch.com/2017/03/03/how-iiot-is-revolutionizing-
utilities/
The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is creating huge opportunities in the water and
wastewater industries, adding value to both the utility and the consumer. Connected
machines are reshaping the way these utilities operate, allowing them to make smarter
and more informed decisions. By driving up innovation, water utilities are driving down
cost. Here’s what they’re up to.
Treating water and wastewater requires chemical processes that can now be monitored
more accurately using digital data collection. These digital transformations are taking the
guesswork out of chemical processing and allow utilities to optimize the amount of
chlorine dollars spent to maintain safe levels — saving time, money and empowering
operators to make fewer mistakes.
Another IIoT development, a new SaaS application that’s set to launch later this month,
will calculate wastewater clarifier tank performance — providing quick analysis on a
critical step in the wastewater process. The tool, called ClariFind, alerts utilities as they’re
getting close to a failure before they experience it. ClariFind will predict when sludge will
overflow and be released. This kind of problem causes EPA issues and fines that can run
in the millions of dollars. It will also be able to predict a thickening failure, which is when
the effluent doesn’t settle correctly and creates a costly sludge blanket in the tank.
ClariFind is just one part of a water operations suite of productivity enhancers — solutions
as a service.
Predictive analytics are also solving monitoring problems that were not previously
possible for utilities. For example, there are a large number of pumps that are commonly
found within water facilities, and digitized data is making it possible for companies to
accurately predict when these pumps might fail — ahead of time. It’s similar to the
predictive analytic technology used in jet engine checks between airline flights. This
cloud-based application easily connects to pumps and helps companies avoid costly and
inconvenient failures, allowing engineers to schedule controlled maintenance rather than
reactive maintenance.
Concepts are in the works to apply this type of predictive technology to residential
properties as well, in order to help home owners and property managers predict sump
pump failures, for instance, before the basement floods. This technology will be a must-
have asset for seasonal homes that don’t have inhabitants year-round. Utilities are leading
8. the way in pilot stages for this type of residential technology.
Safety procedures are also being monitored and enforced more closely by keeping track
of them using digitized technology. In Florida, the water division of the Orlando Utilities
Commission is using IIoT technology to remind employees of protocol procedures when
dangerous chlorine leaks are detected. The safety procedure is sent to a worker’s device
to be confirmed before access to the contaminated area is granted.
Both private companies and government agencies are utilizing IIoT technology to increase
efficiency and profitability in water. GE has launched an industrial platform called Predix, a
cloud-based platform as a service (PaaS) that enables asset performance management
on an industrial scale. For water utilities, Predix will help utilities organize time-series data
to monitor asset functionality.
The Environmental Protection Agency has technology that will be used to create a new
way to digitally improve the monitoring of water age and water quality. This is a very
important issue for consumers because when water ages and sits in a pipe for too long,
water quality goes down — which was one part of the problem at play in the Flint water
crisis. We expect an analogous approach to the way Google Maps handles traffic to
represent the water age, enabling municipalities to monitor this more easily.
Running a water utility is becoming more like running a business. Utilities are no longer
solely relying on customers for funding, they’re collaborating and looking at alternative
revenue streams to supplement cost. While power utilities have been leading the way on
alternative revenue streams, water utilities are now following suit. The District of Columbia
Water and Sewer Authority (DC Water) has begun to commercialize their intellectual
property, giving them a new revenue channel. For example, they are commercializing their
water ammonia versus nitrate algorithm (which is something that keeps the right chemical
balance needed for breaking down wastewater) and selling it to other treatment plants.
Partnerships between technology companies and utility companies are facilitating
innovation and developing solutions to become cleaner and more efficient at a rapid
pace. It truly is a transformative time in the industry, and the results couldn’t be more pure
— better drinking water for everyone.
How energy-data-as-a-service is
enabling innovation
Source URL: https://www.greenbiz.com/article/how-energy-data-service-enabling-
innovation
Sanjoy Malik
Thursday, February 2, 2017 - 11:43pm
Energymanagementis of increasing importance to business leaders across many
corporate functions, driven by increased energy supply options (including renewables and
storage); opportunities to reduce energy use and cost; increased focus on corporate
responsibility and sustainability; and significant product innovation across the industry.
Energy is no longer considered a line item cost, but a resource that can be optimized and
reduced with benefit to the enterprise.
9. Data are the foundational enabler to all of these activities. Two key sources, utility bill and
smart meter data, can be used to enable better decision making, which makes it easier to
baseline current energy usage and model potential scenarios to reduce it. In many cases,
the difference between successful and unsuccessful facility and energy management
initiatives is accurate, timely and complete data.
Unfortunately, there are significant barriers to many building and energy management
professionals who are seeking energy data to propose and implement new initiatives.
First, the energy market is fragmented, with a few hundred major investor-owned utilities
serving most of the major metropolitan areas, and over 3,000 total electricity utilities
across the U.S. (including natural gas utilities, the total number of energy suppliers is over
4,500).
Across these utilities, there is a varying range of data made available to customers: in
some utility territories, 15-minute interval data is widely available, but in others, only a
small set of aggregated monthly totals is provided.
Two key sources, utility bill and smart meter data, can be used to enable
better decision making, which makes it easier to baseline current energy
usage and model potential scenarios to reduce it.
Additionally, the formats that are used to provide these data vary widely; the best-case
scenario is a utility that enables customers and third parties to connect to an application
programming interface (API). For an enterprise with national operations, this might require
dozens or even more integrations, costly to develop and maintain.
The Green Button standard does seek to simplify and standardize the energy data
distributed by utilities, but it is still a work in progress. Using paper utility bills is another
option, but digitizing bills is a complex task that might be outside an enterprise’s core
competencies. Even many vendors that serve the energy industry will admit that
collecting energy data at scale is challenging, costly, and error-prone.
Given the substantial opportunities that advanced energy management provides, the
collection and normalization of energy data could be outsourced to firms that specialize in
just this capability. This would enable other firms in the energy industry to focus on their
core offerings, such as: renewables, energy optimization or sustainability and compliance
with national and local regulations.
Offering data as a service
The data-as-a-service (DaaS) model is very common across multiple markets, especially
for any data set that is challenging to collect, manage and centralize. For example, there
are firms that specifically collect and provide weather data to many other product and
service providers. The data suppliers focus on collecting accurate weather data and
making it easy for other organizations to use.
They work with enough product and service providers to justify the significant
investments made in data completeness and quality. Many firms need weather data, from
the agriculture industry to news outlets, and paying a small fee to collect it from a third
party is much more reliable and cost effective than each firm doing it independently.
10. Another data-as-a-service example is navigation and maps. A few firms have invested in
detailed map and navigation data and sell it to many other firms that require maps for
their products. Think of how many websites and apps embed Google Maps. Most are not
navigation firms and do not have the subject matter expertise to build their own map and
navigation database. But, at a reasonable cost, providing a map interface to supplement
the core offering adds value.
Additionally, there are a few credit bureaus that provide individual scores to all credit card
companies and other financial institutions. A credit score and accompanying report is
considered a foundational part of assessing which financial products and services to offer
consumers. Credit card companies, for example, require accurate credit information, but
it’s not a core part of offering financial products. These firms are happy to let a subject
matter expert firm own this part of the solution. Credit card companies make money off
the interest on customer accounts, not the credit scores.
Offering other service models
These data-as-a-service offerings are similar to software-as-a-service (SaaS). Many firms
provide cloud-based, subscription software in a SaaS model. Like data-as-a-service,
customers of the software service avoid purchasing and maintaining hardware, do not
have to worry about upgrades, and can instead focus on running their businesses.
Even Amazon Web Services provides the computing infrastructure that many small and
large firms need to develop and provide cloud-based software for their internal teams or
customers. This Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) model means that firms can move into
the digital age without procuring much hardware. They don’t need to worry about the
capital costs, maintenance or upgrades.
This “as-a-service” model also is available in the energy industry for raw cost and usage
data provided by utilities. Instead of collecting, integrating and normalizing energy data
from many sources (the utilities themselves), and at significant cost, enterprises and
energy service providers can instead collect such data from a single source, normalized
and error-free.
The Energy-data-as-a-service (EDaaS) model holds great promise for the industry. There
are various firms providing services within the energy industry that could benefit from a
single source of energy data, including:
Accounting and finance. Many firms provide energy budgets, pay utility bills and
forecast future costs and progress towards reduction goals. These activities require
significant process-oriented operations and analysis capabilities. Adding the
acquisition of energy data may be too much effort for these firms.
Energy optimization.Energy performance in many buildings can be improved
using more detailed data, analyzing it and creating statistical models that include
other variables such as weather and occupancy. Firms that provide such analytics
products can scale their operations by using a standard energy data provider.
Energy procurement and supply.Energy purchasing decisions are complex and
firms that provide these services typically invest in analysis of historic bills and
bidding and negotiating capabilities to find and secure the best prices on energy.
By using a third-party for the raw energy data, they can more quickly make
11. decisions about the procurement strategy for their clients.
Sustainability and compliance. Many firms are investing in greater transparency
around energy performance, using sustainability reports and other public
information disclosures. Many large cities are starting to mandate that building
owners get Energy Star scores to benchmark their properties. Both of these
processes can be expedited by more quickly and systematically collecting energy
data via a third party.
Just like many other markets, energy-data-as-a-service enables various industry players
to focus on the core offerings and let a third party provide the foundation energy data that
enables them to deliver their products and services. This model reduces costs to the
energy industry and enables greater innovation by addressing a key barrier to many firms
in this space.
Renewable energy IoT to hit $5.3 billion
annually by 2030
Source URL: http://www.windpowerengineering.com/dw-sync/renewable-energy-iot-hit-
5-3-billion-annually-2030/
Philip Totaro / Founder & CEO / Totaro & Associates
Digitalization and Internet of Things (IoT) technology adoption in the renewable energy
(RE) sector is still in its infancy. This immaturity of digital services platforms in RE leaves a
major opportunity for revenue growth. The emergence of the RE digital services
ecosystem creates a definitive need and opportunity for data-as-a-service (DaaS) and
analytics-as-a-service (AaaS) both of which are likely to be a significant revenue driver as
part of the overall RE digital services sector. The market for digital services in RE is likely
to grow to $89.4 billion by 2030 with annual revenue of $5.3 billion in that time-frame.
12. Despite the broadening range of data analytics players competing in the sector thus far,
no one company is dominant in the digital services space for wind and solar power yet.
Nevertheless, several key companies hold positions which provide them with a desired
market leading position, in spite of the small size of their assets under management. At
present, companies who are strong on SCADA and CMS data analytics have been able to
leverage that into creating a market perceptionregarding their capabilities.
In fact, the limited number of data analytics and digital solutions companies in renewable
energy are creating an environment with scarce resources. It is anticipated that the early
movers in the space indicate will see an explosion of strategic investments or M&A in
2017 to 2018. About 17 to 20 deals are likely to be announced in the next 18 months as
companies cultivate strategic partnerships and acquire assets.
Mainstream IoT companies such as Oracle or SAS will likely enter the renewable energy
market at some point but will require partnerships or acquisitions to expand their
knowledge about this segment of industrial equipment. The number of assets under
management does not represent as much of an opportunity for them vs wearables or
other consumer markets presently where the number of units and the corresponding
amount of data is much higher.
13. Wind, solar, and storage OEMs have strengthened their intellectual property (IP) position
for key functional capabilities of digital services. These features include leveraging SCADA
or CMS data to develop asset life extension models or energy output optimization park
control algorithms. While the innovation landscape is cluttered, there is no dominant
company in terms of IP position. Key technologies which have yet to be patented
represent some whitespace for the digital services platform developers.
A lack of standards is hampering digital services platform development as most OEMs
forge their own path. This creates a scenario in which significant lobby and marketing
resources may be required to convince the industry at large that their solution is the
preferred method.
Content licensing will play a critical role in providing a revenue stream for companies
operating digital services platforms based on the content created by the platform and
their data analytics. It also provides an ancillary benefit of creating an asset class which
can be cross-licensed with other DaaS providers to gain access to needed digital content.
14. Data security is a key growth barrier, comparable in complexity to the standards for
communication protocols and interoperability. While IoT data security companies exist
and have been receiving the majority of VC investment in recent months, this area still
requires further definition and development.
The promise which digitalization holds for renewable energy is to further lower O&M costs
as well as provide significant LCOE value across the entire operational fleet.