Disruptive technologies like cloud, mobility and big data have upended one industry after another —altering the way companies connect with customers, manage the business and manufacture products.
Many of those technologies have bypassed staid, steady utility companies — entities that have operated largely the same for decades — until now.
Utilities are beginning to feel the effects of technological disruption, and the impetus for change has arisen from within the industry itself. Renewable energy sources like wind power and solar energy, combined with regulations that govern their consumption, are turning the traditional power generation and distribution model around 180 degrees.
That change and other forces are requiring utility companies to rethink their entire business model. In this new utility model, successful, integrated utility companies will require the real-time ability to manage the power grid and its generation, transmission and distribution assets. Executives and senior managers at utility companies must become experts at running integrated power companies, with the ability to gather and integrate data from their own facilities as well as consumer-produced power. Doing so means taking advantage of advances in big data applications and analytics to deal with the complexities they now face.
This paper will examine the role wind power analytics (WPA) can play in helping utility companies operate a mix of conventional and renewable power generation assets optimally, and provide services that their customers need and want. FACTORS DRIVING CHANGE IN THE UTILITIES
Until recently, most power companies thought of themselves exactly as the name implies: as “utilities,” providing a reliable source of electricity that is largely invisible to the end customer. Now, a combination of forces is causing utilities to reconsider every aspect of their model, from generation to distribution to consumption. RENEWABLE ENERGY SOURCES ARE GROWING
Among many sources of alternative energy, wind power is becoming an increasingly important source in many countries. Wind turbines today generate from 100 kilowatts for residences or “microgrids” up to the newest technology at over 7 megawatts (MW) each. One megawatt can power 250 to 300 homes. The largest wind turbine, the Vestas 164, produces 7.5 MW and has a rotor diameter of 160 meters.1
Worldwide, there are now more than 200,000 wind turbines operating, with a total installed capacity of 282.5 gigawatts as of the end of 2012, growing by 44 gigawatts over 2011. World wind power market penetration is expected to reach 3.35 percent by 2013 and 8 percent by 2018.2
L. RUSSELL RECORDS
The use of wind power is growing rapidly in most developed countries. The three largest wind power producers today are the United States (27.7 percent), China (16.7 percent) and Germany (10.6 percent). The United States today has more than 45,000 wind turbines, providing enough electricity to power 14.7 million homes — roughly equivalent to the number of homes in Colorado, Iowa, Maryland, Michigan, Nevada and Ohio combined.2
Wind farms are sited in geographic areas where winds are consistent and powerful, which in the U.S. is the central plains and the Northeast, Gulf and Northwest coasts.2 According to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), there are theoretically more than 2.2 million km2 of appropriate lands for wind power in the United States. This NREL report also provides estimates of total available wind energy at various tower heights for suitable locations (excluding urban areas, national parks, water features, etc.). At 80 meters, there is about 10,000 gigawatts of wind energy available in the United States, or 14,000 gigawatts at 100 meters based on a 30 percent gross capacity factor. Higher is definitely better.
RENEWABLE ENERGY AND REGULATION AFFECT THE BASIC BUSINESS MODEL Power companies face multiple challenges to their basic business model as
renewable energy sources like wind and solar are integrated into the power grid. In Germany, customers generate more than half of the renewable power available. When customers are producing at high levels, German utility provider RWE is forced to cut back its own generation from oil, gas and coal. When this coincides with a period of high demand such as a hot, sunny day, the need for power generated by quick-start plants is diminished. Peak power is one of the utility’s most profitable sources of revenue.
Regulation has an effect as well, through a process referred to as “constraint.” When a utility purchases less renewable power than what is available, some countries such as the UK require the utility to pay a constraint fee to the wind generator. This trend is growing throughout Europe and in the United States.
UTILITY GRIDS REQUIRE EXPENSIVE UPGRADES TO MANAGE RENEWABLE ENERGY Legacy power grids were designed with a few centralized power generation facilities that led out to the service areas where line capacities became lower and lower, following the form of a tree. Primary high-voltage lines form the trunk from which branches of descending size and capacity branch out. While this offers efficient distribution from source to consumer, renewable energy produces new origination points, putting energy back into the grid from the “wrong” end.
CONSUMERS ARE BECOMING MORE SOPHISTICATED
With the increasing sophistication of consumers and the availability of information on any topic from the Internet, utilities are being forced to transform themselves into customer-aware enterprises that can anticipate customer demand for services that reduce the customer’s bill and encourage energy conservation. Recently, industry analysts Utility Dive interviewed Ted Reguly, San Diego Gas & Electric’s (SDG&E) director of customer programs and projects, about how SDG&E aims to preserve the customer relationship amid all this disruption.3
Utilities are “going to be much more customer-centric” over the next 3 to 5 years, Reguly said. “You’re going to see utilities spend a lot more time and effort trying to better understand their customers.”
“A couple years ago, we had a very captive customer that we treated as one-size fits all,” said Reguly. “But with these disrupting technologies and competition, we’ve got to get personal with our customers. We need to communicate with them and learn what they want. What makes them tick?”
What many customers have expressed is a desire to know their neighbor’s energy bills, to see if their energy usage was in line with the local practices. Customers were more sensitive to adjusting their energy usage to be more like their neighbors than to pure energy cost.
Duke Energy is trying to do just that.4 One of the first ventures based on this idea is Duke Energy’s “My Home Energy Report,” which launched in 2012. The report seeks to tap into the “competitive nature of people” by comparing customers’ energy usage to the average home, and to efficient homes with a similar profile.
THE NEW UTILITY
With these developments, utilities must become more agile and make better use of the data that they collect. They need to take advantage of advances in big data applications and analytics to deal with the complexities they now face.
This change requires utility companies to start thinking of themselves as managers of the portfolio of energy sources. They must learn how to manage such a distributed energy grid with conventional and renewable sources.
Steven Lacey of RWE, the second largest utility in Germany (24 million customers), has recently been quoted as saying; “We will position ourselves as a project enabler and operator, and [as a] system integrator of renewables.” RWE calls this the “Prosumer” Business Model because it fully engages the customers in energy production and efficiency as well as in energy consumption.
HOW WIND ANALYTICS CAN HELP
Big data and analytics thrive on the diversity of data sources typically found in today’s enterprise. When combined with other new emerging technologies such as machine-to-machine and sensor data, mobility and cloud technologies, web logs and other unstructured content, utilities gain the ability to manage assets as a whole, balancing the variable output of wind power with the steady supply assured by traditional generation sources.
Wind power analytics fall into three categories: weather and wind predictions, turbine and overall wind farm performance, and predictive maintenance. Data for computing wind analytics is readily available from most turbine vendors as well as integrated in-formation from other business systems and external sources, and includes:
• Weather Data — wind speed and direction data, as well as predicted variability to a farm segment level. Also includes temperatures, atmospherics pressure, relative humidity, etc.
• SCADA Industrial Control System Data — whether in real time or reported out on a specific interval (e.g., 10 minutes) or change-only basis; includes turbine speed, bearing temperatures, wind blade angles, wind speed and direction, air density from atmospheric pressure and temperature.
• Condition Monitoring System (CMS) Data — whether from vibration monitoring, acoustic emissions or lube oil monitoring.
• Work Order Data — detailing where, when and how much each repair costs and the results of the work.
• Anemometer Data — recording wind speed and direction at each turbine, usually from a wind vane and cup located on the rear top of the turbine.
With data like this available from many different sources, utilities can answer a broad range of questions that allow them to accommodate the variable nature of wind power and manage their use of other generation sources. More data helps round out the picture with respect to questions that may have been difficult or impossible to an-swer in the past. For example, WPA assists operators in assessing such questions as: • Power output based on a 5-day wind forecast
• Fossil fuel output levels required to make up the difference in wind power output • Managing wind power assets to avoid grid overload
• Consumer power output predictions and purchase recommendations • Optimum generation mix to produce maximum energy
and lowest cost and CO2 output
• Predicted impact of weather events on production assets • Optimal location of assets, equipment and maintenance
teams to minimize weather events
• Improved maintenance schedules driven by condition-based predictive models and wind forecasts
adequate bandwidth from remote sites to transmit all of this data. One innovative solution is to record audio inside the turbine pod and transmit the audio signal for analysis in the control center. The audio recording can provide information on many of these failure modes since the different harmonics indicate abnormal transmission wear, blades out of balance and turbine overspeed.
Of course, determining answers to questions like these doesn’t happen just by plugging numbers into a black box. First, it’s important to realize that working through any application for WPA requires a company to carefully consider the business objectives it wants to meet. The company must consider what types of data sources are required, where those sources are located and what type of algorithms will help provide the right analytics.
And finally, the infrastructure required for big data applications like WPA differs from the structured data warehouse systems most utilities operate. We offer flexible solutions that don’t require a utility to make significant capital investments in order to take advantage of this new era of data-driven management.
CSC HELPS IMPLEMENT WPA THE RIGHT WAY
CSC helps utilities address these challenges and reap the benefits of WPA with business, data science and platform consulting services. We offer flexible solutions that don’t require a utility to make significant capital investments in order to take advantage of this new era of data-driven management.
Our packaged offerings is built exclusively around best-of-breed technologies, and our technology-agnostic approach means that we recommend only solutions that are the best fit for clients, no one-size-fits-all approach.
WPA can have a positive effect on many aspects of a utility’s operation, but its success hinges on identifying the right business need.
We begin our work with clients by helping them determine answers to fundamental questions, identifying the business outcome they would like to achieve. As solutions are considered and executed, we help clients embed those outputs into their business processes at the point where insights will have the greatest business impact.
It’s one thing to identify a strategic, desirable business outcome. Turning it into reality is another matter altogether. That’s the role our data science and analytics consulting team plays. And for many companies, it’s the missing piece of the puzzle that distinguishes game-changing big data applications from disappointing failures. The data scientist looks for trends and associations hidden among seemingly unrelated datasets, developing algorithms to connect dots that have never before been joined. These are the actions yielding insights that deliver a competitive advantage to the business.
CONCLUSION
The worldwide utility business is rapidly changing in energy generation and storage technology. Between the growing availability of renewable energy, regulation, grid upgrades and the evolving “prosumer,” it’s clear that change is coming fast to the industry.
While that may alarm some utilities, forward-looking companies realize that the inevitable must be faced. Utilities must prepare to turn long-held conventions upside-down as a unique cascade of events influences the industry.
Although technology is playing a role is precipitating change, it can also help manage it. Operators who are able to harness the power of the data resident in their systems, as well as the information generated continuously by wind power assets and other sources, can develop a new, holistic view of the generation options available to them. CSC is helping utilities develop this new perspective. Once equipped, tomorrow’s utilities will be better prepared to optimally operate their mix of conventional and renewable power generation assets, and provide services that their customers need and want.
SOURCES
1. http://www.windpowermonthly.com/10-biggest-turbines 2. http://www.windpoweringamerica.gov/wind_maps.asp 4. Utility Dive website, Feb 21st 2014
5. Utility Dive website, Feb 16st 2014
6. “Big Data – How Applied Analytics Can Enhance Your O&M Program”; Sciemus Ltd, Wind Power Update
© 2014 Computer Sciences Corporation. All rights reserved. About CSC
CSC is a global leader in next-generation IT services and solutions. The company’s mission is to enable superior returns on our clients’ technology investments through best-in-class industry solutions, domain expertise and global scale. For more information, visit us at www.csc.com.
+1.703.876.1000
Asia, Middle East, Africa Level 9, UE BizHub East
6 Changi Business Park Avenue 1 Singapore 468017 Republic of Singapore +65.68099.000 Australia 26 Talavera Road Macquarie Park, NSW 2113 Australia +61(2)9034.3000
Central and Eastern Europe Abraham-Lincoln-Park 1 65189 Wiesbaden Germany
+49.611.1420
Nordic and Baltic Region Retortvej 8
DK-2500 Valby Denmark +45.36.14.4000
South and West Europe Immeuble Balzac 10 place des Vosges
92072 Paris la Défense Cedex France
