Local power grids, able to disconnect from the central network and operate autonomously, are no longer primarily used by industries. For cities, they've become a ‘fail-safe’ – ready to spring into action if ever the main grid goes down. Decentralised generation capacity then powers the city 'from the edge'.
Multiple small, local power plants tend to be aggregated in a virtual power plant (VPP) which is dispatched in response to price fluctuations, supervised and managed by automated control and communications systems.
Clean energy sources like wind farms generate between 25% and 40% of their installed capacity – yet not always at times when this electricity is actually needed. “But this is changing,” Herve Amossé at GE Grid Solutions’ Grid Automation says with reference to hydropower pump-storage and digital substations that help utilities route more renewable electricity to homes and businesses.
The major OEMs are competing in supplying such control systems. “Digital Darwinism” is how GE has branded the quest for innovation and new customer segments.
IT meets Darwin at Clearwater
In Clearwater, Florida, a group of GE engineers working at a capacitor manufacturing factory have combined computer code and the principles of natural selection to evolve and build better products.
“Companies have long used quality testing to eliminate defective products. But software now gives them the ability to understand and re-create the exact conditions that yielded products that performed better than they were supposed to during testing,” Laurent Schmitt, GE smartgrid strategy leader commented.
Harnessing the Industrial Internet, “utilities can monitor the electrical power grid in the exact same way devices like fitbits and apple watches monitor our steps,” Karim El-Naggar, chief digital officer for GE energy connection explained.
The industrial internet is bigger and growing twice as fast as the consumer internet, he said, suggesting it already has 20 billion connected devices generating massive amounts of data. In El-Naggar’s view “this massive collection and analysis of data is going to fundamentally transform the way utilities operate.”