Empowering utilities: Long-term planning is key to meeting new demands

Jonathan Geraldeau

Jonathan Giraldeau is the product line manager driving the CYME power engineering software and solutions, part of Brightlayer Utilities. He is fully acquainted with utility needs and leads the definition of the portfolio strategies and roadmap, including the definition of new products and enhancements to existing ones. He started his career at CYME International T&D leading and contributing to various customer and market-oriented activities in North America and around the globe from technical support, product training, seminars, software demonstrations, to requirements analysis and future development planning.

Syed Rizvi

Syed Rizvi is the Regional Sales Leader for Eaton’s Utility Planning products & solutions (CYME/ADPS) . He joined EATON in August 2020 and prior to his current role, Syed has been working with the Electrical Utilities in the EMEA region for two decades. Syed received his Bachelors degree in Electrical & Electronic Engineering at the University of Manchester in the UK. 

ANNOUNCER: Welcome to Eaton's 10 in 10 Podcast, where we focus on industry trends shaping the future of power management. In this series, our expert answers 10 questions about one of today's most talked about industry topics in 10 minutes or less. From the energy transition to digital transformation and beyond, we explore trends and discuss strategies for delivering safer, more efficient, and reliable power.

INTERVIEWER: The transition to a more sustainable low carbon future is accelerating, and the impact is being felt by electric utilities worldwide. Today, we'll be speaking with Jonathan Giraldeau, product line manager for Eaton CYME, power engineering and analysis software, part of Eaton's Brightlayer utility suite and Syed Rizvi, regional sales leader, EMEA about the challenges key trends are creating for utilities and how they're responding to the increased demands they now face. We have 10 questions in 10 minutes. Let's get started.

The rise of new technologies driven by the increasing demand for more sustainable energy is significantly disrupting the utility sector. Syed, let's start with some of the key trends utilities are currently facing.

SYED RIZVI: The energy transition is driving several key changes, which are impacting the utilities. I would like to specially mention the integration of renewable generation at the distribution level, which is then transforming the traditional power distribution company's role to manage localized generation. And another key trend I would like to highlight is the increased need of energy storage to save the excess power generated by the renewables. And we also see a significant increase in the EV adoption and the charging infrastructure needed to support the EVs. And lastly, I would like to mention the stringent regulations being imposed by the policymakers to encourage the energy transition. 

INTERVIEWER: Jonathan, can you talk about the biggest challenges these trends are creating? 

JONATHAN GIRALDEAU: Well, I would say that I personally believe we are at the intersection of two phenomenon. First is the fast technological evolution that, I mean, the global society is facing. The other one is a tendency in the utility industry to limit investments in their organizational capability over a long period of time. So when these two things intersect, it elevates some challenges-- and just to name a few, for example, the difficulty with managing corporate data sources. We live in a world of data and under investments in this area is starting to penalize utilities in their ability to implement new solutions to modern challenges.

There's also a heavy tendency in this industry to rely on homegrown tools or disparate tools or create some sort of Frankenstein solution with a mix of homegrown, obsolete, modern tools. A lot of utilities have built their own solutions over time. And either-- I mean, when they need revamps or investments, these are areas that are difficult to modernize. And there's also a third component, which is the difficulty in attracting and training their technical experts. I mean, historically in the utility industry, there's a lot of tribal knowledge. And without processes, without automation it is difficult to perpetuate this knowledge in the modern world that we're living in.

INTERVIEWER: So how are new digital solutions changing the way utilities work?

JONATHAN GIRALDEAU: Well, definitely, new technologies can help them address factors that are putting the most stress on their organizations, such as the massive increases in DER interconnection requests or the improved reporting as part of the regulatory compliance. At the same time, planning departments are expected to play a larger role in running scenarios to support strategic decision making and break down the constraints of organizational silos. The natural outcome of grid modernization is, of course, nimble and efficient organization that is able to freely share the information between departments to address problems, work smarter, and better serve their customers. 

INTERVIEWER: Syed, do these trends elevate the importance of effective planning practices for utilities?

SYED RIZVI: Absolutely. The energy transition and especially digitization are bringing many new technologies into the grid making it more complex and less predictable. And as a result, this is forcing utility leaders to become more reliant on their planning departments to optimize the capital expenditures to ensure a safe, reliable, and resilient grid, which is future ready. 

INTERVIEWER: So how can an effective planning framework help utilities address the pressure created by aging infrastructure, Jonathan?

JONATHAN GIRALDEAU: Well, when you bring it back to it's simplest expression, planning is essentially trying to predict something that you're going to do in the future or that you're going to need to do in the future. And by planning it today, chances are you're going to take better decisions and make savings throughout the process. So in the context of utilities, planning allows them to look into the future by running different scenarios of load increase, of new loads, new types of loads, and also new DER new technologies.

And well, all of this is an attempt at predicting the outcome on their grid. I mean, is their infrastructure sound, solid, robust enough for the future challenges? So these scenarios are designed to spend different operating conditions. So when they're running the simulation, they can see the impact on their infrastructure.

Is it constrained? Why is it constrained? Is it the aging of the infrastructure that's the driving factor? There can be multiple things. The end goal is to answer the million dollar question. Is the existing infrastructure enough to take care of the needs of the grid today and in the future? 

INTERVIEWER: And what are the risks associated with not doing effective planning?

JONATHAN GIRALDEAU: Well, if we keep things simple, if you fail to plan, you're essentially planning to fail. So if we take it more seriously, the risks include increased costs, working in a reactive state, always reacting to the conditions and operations oftentimes, dealing with more outages, reliability metrics that degrade over time. And all of this drives cost. Whether it's fines, whether it's wasted resources, it all comes back to better use of the capital.

When planning issues are more severe, they may lead to long-term under-investments in the grid and to a general degradation of its performance over time. In the context of the energy transition and the global climate change that both put pressure on the grid, utilities, they need to modernize their planning framework and better leverage data to inform their decision making process.

INTERVIEWER: So we've talked a lot about technology and grid infrastructure. But Jonathan, what about the human element of this?

JONATHAN GIRALDEAU: That's a great question. And definitely it's probably half of the question and the solution. You have to consider the human element in all of this. I mean, people can pick up the slack for only so long, but then the responsibility to deliver remains theirs. And when they're understaffed, it puts unnecessary pressure on engineering teams, which are running the business. Ultimately, the engineering is the core business of the utility and one of the core departments.

So expectations keep increasing, and utilities need to manage human assets as well as their electrical assets in the field. This is a critical element in the future success of the organization. People need to be at the center of the transition, and focus needs to be on automating the work processes around them. The idea is to engage the engineering team in the process to make sure the new tools are designed in such a way that they take off low value added tasks of their plate, allowing them to focus where their talent is needed. 

INTERVIEWER: This industry tends to be risk averse and for good reason. We all rely on the electric grid. Syed, how does a holistic view of the grid play a role in strategic decision making?

SYED RIZVI: Well, today's grid operators often manage grid related data in various isolated systems like the GIS, the ERPs, the SCADA, the DMS, OMS. So these are the various utility databases. However, there is no central and validated power grid model that can permanently combine all data. And there is little transparency about free grid capacities, and a lot of manual input is required for many processes and studies.

This makes many processes time consuming, error prone, and most importantly, creating a blind spot in visualizing the grid. Hence, there is-- there is a strong need for a holistic view of the grid, which enables accurate modeling of the as built to as planned systems by incorporating the various corporate databases and enabling the utilities to understand the impact of renewables, battery energy storage systems, and EVs on the grid.

INTERVIEWER: Jonathan, what other questions should utilities be asking to improve the way that they work?

JONATHAN GIRALDEAU: I would encourage them to elaborate a road map with clear, achievable objectives. Just take a bit of time to evaluate where your organization stands today and identify low hanging fruits as well as more ambitious targets. Probably one of the first elements to look into is data, data sources, corporate data sources, no matter source of truth. No matter how you call that, they really should be considered as a utility asset and managed accordingly.

If you're not leveraging your data now, it's time to start planning for how you will use it in the future. We need to capture the power of the data, and we need to use it more effectively. Another aspect to consider is whether the current business processes are still delivering the value the utility expects and whether the tool set in place has the capability to support them today and in the future. 

INTERVIEWER: And Jonathan, for our last question, what advice do you have for utilities to help them keep pace with the new pressures they're facing?

JONATHAN GIRALDEAU: It's critical to think about how automation will help manage routine tasks going forward. Many utilities have started to implement increased automation solutions into their workflows to help manage overloaded departments, speed up processes, and essentially, cope with the ever-increasing list of requirements around the planning and the operation of the electric grid, such as integration of renewables, long-term capacity planning, regulatory reporting, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I don't think this list is going to reduce over time, so capturing data processes and automation is a way to relieve pressure on the engineering teams and prepare the utility to what's ahead. 

INTERVIEWER: Thank you for sharing your insights today, Jonathan and Syed. To learn more about how we're helping utilities prepare for the future, visit us at Eaton.com.