Weekly Brief

How can Utility CIOs Save Costs by Integrating Renewables with Grid

Utilities Tech Outlook | Monday, September 16, 2019

With renewable energy sources changing power system planning and operations, CIOs are adopting the practice of smart grid integration as an efficient way to save cost.  

FREMONT, CA: The ability to leverage, capture, and effectively consume energy is a hot topic of interest over the past few years. Increasing population and energy demand is fueling the need for innovative ways to generate, store, and transmit energy from a variety of sources. The modern world is now heavily dependent on electrical power, and the same has given birth to widespread support for using renewable energy, which provides electricity without any carbonic emission.   

Harnessing renewable sources for electricity depends on the efficiency of technology, and thus flexible, reliable, and smart grids are playing a crucial role in its integration. Around the world, the change in electricity as a need to fight climate change and increase energy security is high on demand. As a result, renewable energy shares across electricity generation are rising.

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CIOs and regulators can consider aiming at cost savings while planning renewable integration with the grid. Power system planners can sustain investment in new renewable energy integration by aligning targets and incentives with grid integration considerations. Long term inspirational renewable energy targets establish a vision that can drive innovation in the policies and system operation supporting cost savings and clean energy. Grid-aware incentive programs for grid integration among customers are motivating revenue from investing in renewable energy and mitigating the negative impacts of integrating these resources to the grid. A well-crafted combination of policies and procedures encourages investment, improving utilization of renewable energy sources and potentially avoiding the need for network refurbishments, thus reducing costs.

Smart grid integration provides opportunities for the implementation of real-time forecasting, faster scheduling, and other services, that are among the least-cost options for CIOs to unlock significant flexibility without large investments in the physical infrastructure. The flexibility option in operational coordination enables the sharing of renewable resources through reserve sharing, coordinated scheduling, and consolidated operation, thus, tapping into cost savings. Also, marginal costs—the incremental prices resulting from the most appropriate adjustment of the power generation, and distribution systems to meet the continuously increasing demand —can reflect the actual costs of power generation and distribution.

Price is a significant variable in the success of renewable energy promotion. The pricing models for renewable energy integration are based on the unique features of the sources, which offers new streams of revenue generation. The application of smart grid technology promises to provide benefits to utility CIOs by better utilizing electric system assets to securely satisfy consumer energy demands at lower monetary and environmental costs. Smart grids and smart meters enable utility providers to adopt energy management methods, including demand-side management leading to optimum utilization of renewable energy that ultimately results in energy saving, translating to cost savings for utility providers.

The need to integrate more renewable energy sources with the grid of the future is very well evident. The power system planners and operators will face the challenge of integrating renewable energy sources with the power system grids, although it is an innovative option for electricity generation. Recognizing the advantages of them have resulted in a worldwide installment of them in recent years. To further accelerate the pace and effectiveness of this transition, CIOs will need to bring together the domains of technologies, operational practices, and organizational arrangements. 

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