The smart grid infrastructure will inevitably produce an explosion of data, and utility may need to have a comprehensive information management ability to handle it. While many organizations are still struggling to modernize their legacy infrastructure, isn’t going digital too big a leap? What’s the strategy to meet smart grid challenges and reach the end goal? Do they have the internal capability to manage this disruptive transformation?

Contributor

• • Ravi Pradhan, Vice President of Technology, Siemens Smart Grid

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Transcript

Sanjog Aul:
Welcome listeners. This is Sanjog Aul, your host and the topic for conversation is Managing Transition To Smart Grid and I have with me Ravi Pradhan. Ravi is the Vice President, Technology Strategy at Siemens Smart Grid Division. Hello Ravi, how are you? Thank you for joining us.

Ravi Pradhan:
Doing very well, Sanjog and how are you?

Sanjog Aul:
I’m doing very well, thank you so much. Actually, the topic that we have picked up today is a very interesting topic where a lot of companies are, especially the utilities, are trying to manage their the transition to smart grid and I’ve got some pointed questions and the first one that I’d like to ask is actually to set the stage and just let’s inventory what are the top challenges and or concerns that are posing roadblocks for utilities in the transition to smart grid and what all is being tried to overcome these challenges?

Ravi Pradhan:
Okay, so, when we talk about smart grid, I think what we’re really looking for is what is the payback for all the stakeholders and what’s involved in it and by and large what we’re talking about is getting some form of an economic payoff and have some environment payoff, environmental type of payoff also, for example. So when we talk about smart grid, there’s probably a few different aspects to it. For example, a lot of it is around modernizing the grid. I think there’s been a lot of talk about the fact that the infrastructure has been aging, it’s been kept up to date, it’s still very reliable but as we go forward we really need to try and squeeze more out of it and make it more resilient. That’s one aspect of it. The other aspect is the greening of the grid.

Ravi Pradhan:
We need to bring in more renewables. We need to take advantage of the fact that there are technologies that make renewables more and more viable, but the grid needs to adapt to be able to make use of that. That’s another aspect of smart grid. A third aspect is of course being able to, now that we are such an information technology based society, the idea of providing more of this information from the grid back to the consumer, to the industries, et cetera, and the utilities themselves is a big factor in smart grid. So the challenges are really varied and there are a lot of them. There’s no question about it. For example, there is a very involved regulatory process that utilities need to go through. You’ll be able to introduce some of these changes.

Ravi Pradhan:
It’s not you can introduce a new product or a new pattern of usage, etc and provide it to consumers without any kind of regulatory oversight. So there is a whole process, there’s time spent in the process where you need to go through to get a table for some of these aspects. Reliability in the grid is key. So you do want some of this stuff to happen. Try dancing. Some of these technologies don’t come cheap and it’s always an issue of how are you going to finance some of these changes.

Ravi Pradhan:
We see that, I think in the economy in general. We’ve had a lot of debates around infrastructure, et cetera. The grid is part of that infrastructure, so financing is an issue. The smart grid and like I said, incorporates so many different things. You need to identify the appropriate technologies. When you think of the grid, there are multiple levels to it, right. I think it’s important to point out there’s the actual grid itself, there’s the wires that are running that carry the power, et cetera but you’ve got the substations that tie all these together

Ravi Pradhan:
but you’ve also got the technologies that run within them. So you’ve got automation inside these substations. You’ve got control centers that are managing the grid and optimizing it, managing demand. You’ve got analytics running on top of it. Identifying these technologies and applying them correctly is another challenge. How are we trying to overcome them from a business model perspective? Try and adapt to newer business models such that perhaps you can get away from some of the need for regulation financing, come up with new financing models, such as having models where there may be more of a pay for performance kind of contract so that the utility investment is a lot less. I think the types of challenges are varied and what is being done to try and overcome them are also appropriate to those very challenges.

Ravi Pradhan:
So that’s a long answer, Sanjog. I hope I address at least a part of that question.

Sanjog Aul:
Very definitely and it was a loaded question. Of course you set a pretty good stage now. Do you think anything that specifically is being done to overcome these challenges effectively? Is that really happening in the right way?

Ravi Pradhan:
I think it is. I think the scope of these changes and the challenges are vast, like I said and I think at all levels everybody is being very smart about how to address them. They’re not, I don’t think there’s any one entity out there, any stakeholder who’s trying to deal with them all at once. I always use the example of the air traffic control system. The fact of the matter is introducing new technologies, the use of GPS made the whole stream of volume of air traffic actually go up because there were tighter tolerances.

Ravi Pradhan:
Now that we know much more accurately where the planes are, it’s the same kind of thing with the bridge. We don’t have to install a whole new set of new wires if we know how to better or more optimally use it. There are the answers to these things are being handled very specifically and in a very targeted manner.

Sanjog Aul:
Now, given the size and complexity of any such endeavor, is it like boiling the ocean or are we taking bite sized chunks and what would you say would the best way to split them in order to manage this transition effectively?

Ravi Pradhan:
Again, like I was saying earlier, I think there are, there is a pretty decent split in terms of what can be dealt with, in other words, to use your word, what is being dealt with in bite size chunks. Utilities, for example, are who are dealing with the distribution side. They’re picking off smaller chunks. For example, the use of smart meters, transmission operators are being are using tools that dealing with the transmission of energy more optimally.

Ravi Pradhan:
It’s being made more manageable by virtue of using more tools, more targeted and more focused on specific pieces of it. It has to be more specific because there are so many layers to this problem. I think I was saying earlier, for example, you got the bridge itself. Yes, of course you can use technologies to update that, but you can also use a lot of information technology kind of tools to do things like make the grid more resilient. For example, there is teeter automation or substation automation, what we refer to where for example, if there is some kind of a fault, you have a storm or somebody cuts a tree and it accidentally goes across a line. In the normal case, that might mean that whole section of the seader is out of operation but now using information technology, using smart relays, we have algorithms that can detect within milliseconds where this fault has occurred, because you know which section you’re losing and it can automatically switch the seader so that everybody around where that fault has occurred is basically being supplied by power within, literally within milliseconds.

Ravi Pradhan:
We know of an application of it to protect the hospital. For example, the hospital is protected with these technologies where these relays are talking to each other using very standardized messages so that if in an event of an occurrence like this, the hospital would actually not see any outage, they wouldn’t need to kick in their emergency generators, There wouldn’t be loss of power, detectable loss of power in the building at all. These problems can be dealt with in very specific ways and very manageable ways by addressing specific problems along the way.

Sanjog Aul:
Let’s take a quick break listeners. We’ll be right back after these messages and discuss about the bandwidth that’s available for a utility to be able to handle the smart grid related initiatives and also when they’re already dealing with the challenges dealing with the legacy infrastructure. Please stay tuned and we’ll be right back.

Speaker C:
The US and Canada represent just 5% of the global population, but collectively we consume about 35% of the world’s resources. Supply is not keeping up with demand, so change is not an option. It’s imperative. Siemens brings knowledge to power through modernization, responsible energy consumption and bringing the grid projects. Siemens Smart Grid has the answers. Just Google lead the charge portal.

Ravi Pradhan:
Hello.

Ravi Pradhan:
You are listening to CIO Talk Radio Viewpoint.

Ravi Pradhan:
Thank you.

Sanjog Aul:
Welcome back listeners. So the question, Ravi, here is that utilities that we see today are traditionally working on thin margins and increasingly demanding regulations. Do you think they have spare bandwidth available to go after smart grid? Especially when there are already challenges with maintaining even the legacy infrastructure?

Ravi Pradhan:
That’s an interesting question because I’m already seeing in the news about stories about how maintaining the legacy infrastructure is already an extensive proposition and whose price is only really going to keep going up. In a sense that kind of drives that the utilities really do need to start looking at these smart grid solutions and really have to be driven towards that because that’s the way that that is the most economically viable upgrading upon continually upgrading and maintaining the grid has been a task that’s carried out by the utilities and they’ve been phenomenal at it. We have a very, we have a relatively reliable grid. As the costs of maintaining that continue to increase, at some point it does begin to make sense to bring in new technologies to replace the existing infrastructure and the idea of course is that this new infrastructure would require a lower maintenance cost and would effectively pay for itself. So when you talk about working on thin margins, I think to some extent utilities really are driven to this smart grid who basically account for that. It’s offsetting the cost of maintaining the legacy infrastructure by simply updating it with newer technologies. There’s also the idea of course, moving to a different business model where there might be more vendors who are interested in working with the utility on a more pay for performance kind of a scenario.

Ravi Pradhan:
So there, there are, there is bandwidth in that sense for the utilities to do this. It may be tight, but to some degree they can go to that and in the end I think the payoff will be what they expect.

Sanjog Aul:
So what education and or collaboration that you think needs to be imparted between the city, government, utilities, policymakers and consumers to ensure a seamless transition and end user adoption since there are so many entities involved here?

Ravi Pradhan:
I think in the end, all the cities, the utilities, government, really need to emphasize the payoff of this tremendous amount of economic and public good and environment payoffs that all has to be built in to the story of, into the education of all the stakeholders there is, california has a mandate, for example, to use up to 33%, I believe, of renewables by 2020. That in and of itself has an advantage in terms of reducing the carbon footprint. All the public good that comes out of going with a more green grid. There is all the payoff in terms of modernizing the grid because the expression that we use now is that electricity is the fuel of choice for today’s society. Without electricity to charge your iPad, you don’t have an iPad. Without electricity to run your routers, you don’t have information technology, you don’t have the Internet. The electricity is the fuel of choice for the society

Ravi Pradhan:
and modernizing the grid so that we can get more of that fuel has to be part of the story of what we advocate and educate all the stakeholders with and then of course, all the information that we can provide as a consequence of all the smart grid technologies, how much are you actually consuming? How much are you, when can you most economically charge your electric vehicles, that you go down that path? All that information can now be fed back to consumers. All of that education, all that message needs to be put out there. The payoffs from applying the smart grid we believe is tremendous and that’s. Those are some of the aspects of what we need to educate the stakeholders with them.

Sanjog Aul:
Now finally, what’s your message to the same or various stakeholders in terms of how they can play their respective role in order to make this transition to smart grid actually a predictable success?

Ravi Pradhan:
I think in terms of a message to all the stakeholders, I think the key is doing this in a measured set of steps such that we can achieve. So basically take an approach that will ensure success and to ensure success, we need to take these things in smaller chunks, deal with the things that we can actually deal with and act on those first. Now, in terms of providing information back to the consumer, for example, the incorporation of smart meters means that consumers have much better visibility into what their consumption patterns are. In terms of modernizing grid, the message is really take on the stuff that we do, we can do successfully in the near term and then move on to more esoteric areas. We can already optimize how much energy we can pass through the transmission grid and how cheaply we can produce it. All these all the stakeholders really need to participate by contributing to identifying what the achievable chunks are and taking that forward. Information technology, as it stands today, is the backbone of the Smart grid, because that’s where all of this information can be gathered and brought forth.

Ravi Pradhan:
Information technology is well tried and tested because of the fact that we have it so dispersed and widely used in the Internet. That’s what we want to use, and that’s what we want to successfully apply in the Smart grid realm.

Sanjog Aul:
Once again, thank you so much Ravi for sharing your thoughts and insights about how these utilities can manage transition to Smart Grid.

Ravi Pradhan:
Thank you Sanjog.

Sanjog Aul:
And listeners I invite you to further find more conversations about Smart Grid on our website at www.ciotalkradio.com/smart Grid.