The next is ‘Distributed Energy Source Integration’

It’s critical to bring together all the technology providers so as to assist technology users in a more realistic manner.

Traditionally, electricity been treated as a commodity, with someone producing, transferring, and distributing it and us, the users, paying bills. Today, electricity has taken on a whole new meaning. We’ve been talking about smart grids for a while now, and with the advent of various new technologies, electricity today, taken on an entirely new dimension.

Technology Disruptions 

Disruptions are happening in the telecom sector or in the internet world. Much more disruptions are like to occur in the power sector. If we look closely, and analyse the situation, we realise that the entire world is getting electrified with a significant contribution from renewable energy resources. Many non-conventional loads, such as our metropolitan mass rapid transit, metros, and autos, are moving to electrical loads. This change would further necessitate substantial energy storage as well as renewable intermittency.

However, the question of how much DC will supplant AC, or direct current, remains to be the same. As a result, without power and electrification of the planet, decarbonisation will be impossible. Since every infrastructure contains a significant amount of embedded intelligence, we anticipate a large amount of data to flow in at every point of the infrastructure. As a result, it will necessitate the use of a plethora of software and new technologies, such as analytics among the others. At the end of the day, everyone wants power that is dependable, affordable, and efficient. All of this is made possible by the wonderful inclusion of electricity and digitalisation and making these two subjects inextricably linked in the expanding context. Distributed energy resource (DER) integration is a most significant innovation that will occur in the next 100 years. 

Integrating DER into the grid 

A huge amount of DER integration is expected by the grid. A grid must be self-immune as we can no longer afford to have people looking at infrastructure reliability and then going to change the configurations to restore immunity. So, the self-immune grid is probably what is needed; also, digital grid management with huge amount of data is expected in the coming years.

Changes in revenue models are another significant change that is expected. Changing revenue models: This will be the most significant change. There was only one relationship: paying the bill for the commodity’s use. Tomorrow, we may be involved in a variety of other ancillary services; we can also work in demand response to assist the utility with peak load. It’s possible that the providers will supply rooftop power to the grid. When the power is low and the power price is low, the electric vehicle may charge and the consumer may increase the prices to help with demand management. As a result, there will be numerous role changes, as well as numerous new revenue models.

So, digitisation is the only way forward. Moreover, the grid is going to be dynamic, electrified and digitalised everywhere. With this level of digitalisation we will be interacting with the grid services, there will be machines interacting, there will be businesses interacting. So, it is going to be a superpower; which means, a big energy net is going to be created. And to manage the same, we would require seamless integration of IoT-enabled architecture.

Integrating DER into our power systems 

Technical and commercial integration are the two types of integration available in DER. Technical integration is all about evolving technologies and protocols, further classified as Electrical integration and communication integration. When we electrically integrate technology into the correct spot, we will be able to see how we can connect a car to a charger, or a charger to the grid; whether there’s enough capacity; and whether it’s intended for bi-directional power flow and so on. The protocol, or standard through which each of these components will communicate with the central system, is at the heart of communication integration. Will the charger communicate using OCCP protocols; will the automobile itself communicate with the entity via the charger, or is there an internet that communicates, and so on and so forth? That’s all there is to it in terms of technical integration.

Next is commercial integration, which is the most crucial aspect. Here, we need to figure on how to register each of the DERs as a commercial entity; how to figure out the total number of consumption by DER system; what are the various types of services that a DER can enable, and how to orchestrate a DER. So, that’s commercial integration, and it’s essentially a financial subject. 

Integration can take various forms. And this is the business model that will result in the proper integration, with technology assistance. If someone comes along tomorrow and says, “I have 10,000 houses, 5000 of which have 1kW solar on top of them”, this basically means that they have a huge capacity of 5000 x 1 kW.

India has the largest renewable energy and electric vehicle ambitions. It was surprising to find a large number of changing EV policies in the United States. As a result, Gujarat and Maharashtra began enacting their own plans. So, we already have tax rebates and tax exemptions, we also have a green certificate, so we may expect to see a significant increase in the number of electric vehicles on the road, as well as accompanying fees. 

Furthermore, “I enabled net metering on my house because it was very interesting for me to do it on the Karnataka grid because I got a subsidy. I mean, I am only a three-kilowatt load on the utility, but I have a three-kilowatt rooftop solar on my house. Can you imagine that? And here it is, I have become a prosumer. And if multiple people were to install net metering systems in their residential premises, we would require a huge number of storage systems to manage and maintain them. DER is a huge opportunity for India, so we need to look at ways to increase appropriate integration of the DER systems”, says Anil Kumar Kadam, Vice Chairman, IEEMA – Smart Grid Division.

IEEMA’s outlook towards the new world of energy 

IEEMA, as an association, are aiming to bring various events from around the world together. Many plans or projects are being established in India, and they wanted to try to bring them all together for long-term or practical execution. So, they are working on a reference architecture, which once completed, will provide a reference, like, a technical documentation for all of our utilities, ensuring that we don’t have a plethora of technical documents to deal with interoperability issues, standardisation and non-standardisation issues, and so on.

IEEMA is also working on a cyber-security reference architecture, which is just as important as the technological reference architecture, since we know that Indian entities must have a defence-in-depth strategy. As a result, we are attempting to assist the ministry of power and CEA in picking the appropriate cyber-security standards, processes, and best practices from industry participants into the ministry of power’s domain knowledge. As a result of this market modification, IEEMA is doing two of the most crucial things. IEEMA plays a critical role in bringing together all of the technology providers in order to assist technology users in being more realistic in their approach.

Comments by: Anil Kumar Kadam, Vice Chairman, IEEMA – Smart Grid Division