Utilities Will Rely on Vendor Ecosystems to Support the Energy Transition

Until recently, I often introduced presentations or blog posts with a warning that the utility industry was about to enter the most disruptive decade in its century-long existence. That is no longer true, because I believe the industry has now entered that decade. Okay, the timing for different countries may vary, as will the length of the period of disruption. In fact, some countries—Germany and Denmark in particular—have experienced significant disruption already. But for most markets, the rumblings, threats, omens, and rumors have only recently turned into action.

Guidehouse Insights has a significant volume of commentary on future energy markets, all based around its concept of the Energy Cloud—where energy becomes more distributed, clean, intelligent, and mobile. The old business model of centralized generation will shift to a decentralized, customer-centric value chain, where energy services become far more important than energy supply. Guidehouse Insights also identified an additional $1 trillion of new value created in the Energy Cloud by 2030.

There Will Be No Energy Transition without a Digital Transformation

It is important to note that the energy transition is as much a digital revolution as it is an energy revolution. The $1 trillion of new value identified by Guidehouse Insights will likely be created through the provision of digital energy services, from automated demand response to transactive energy. None of this value will be delivered without access to vast quantities of data from an enormous and heterogeneous array of devices. None of this value can be delivered without a robust IT infrastructure to support digital energy services.

As part of thought leadership, Guidehouse Insights has identified seven platforms that are critical to the delivery of digital services within the Energy Cloud. Additional white papers are on the roadmap to discuss these platforms in further detail. Next up is a white paper on the neural grid platform, which describes—among other things—the devices, communications, and analytics that will underpin all other digital services in the Energy Cloud.

Vendor Ecosystems Will Help Manage the Complexity of the Energy Cloud

Guidehouse Insights’ upcoming Neural Grid white paper will shine a light on the sheer complexity of the IT infrastructure required. There will not be any plug and play platform for the foreseeable future. The market is new, moving rapidly, and different utilities have different requirements. As a result, over the next decades individual utilities will deploy many platforms that rely on many datasets created by many devices communicated over many networks using many protocols stored in many locations supplied by many, many different vendors.

It is critical for the success of the Energy Cloud that vendors cooperate within official and unofficial partnerships and work toward their customers’ common goals. Join us on November 14 at 2:00 p.m. EST for an Intel-sponsored Guidehouse Insights webinar. We’ll explore in more detail how the energy transition and associated digital transformation requires strong vendor ecosystems and gain some insights from Intel, which sits at the heart of one of the largest smart grid ecosystems.