Entrada Blog

Every business in the world is changing. This comment for the beginning of this post on the blog seems too grandiloquent, but we firmly believe that that is the reality although sometimes not be achieved completely. This article is based on an article published in www.smartgridsinfo.es where this evolution is evaluated. We refer to the article published by Antonio Higuera where he speaks specifically about this topic (https://www.smartgridsinfo.es/comunicaciones/comunicacion-hacia-uberizacion-negocio-electrico). The author of the article shows how everything is changing in the electrical service to get to think how the technological platforms will break into this business. One of the bases to get to this point where we are today is the increasing power that the client has, where we are more connected and we are more demanding. Today we also see how the most developed countries in the world are putting the smart meters or Smart meters in each client, that shows us that we are in the midst of a "substantive" change in the electrical sector. A change that reminds us of when we moved from a common cell phone to a Smart phone. Let us remember there then the whole new application industry that developed within it (for example the topic of social networks). From the perspective of a customer of the electricity sector, perhaps for now only very few changes are observed that are not changes in the price, but slowly with the intrusion mainly of solar energy the car consumption is increasingly interesting.

Where the value is shifting in the electricity sector

"One of the features of this new Digital age is the ability of customers to have more options and control, new technologies reconfigure traditional structures. In the electrical sector, the traditional structure is unidirectional from generation to consumption. Technology helps people's empowerment, the engine of the digital economy. We will not enter here in the negative factors that also exist, as almost everything in life. This characteristic is beginning to be observed in the electrical sector, the value is going from the generation-transmission-distribution to the own user or prosumer. This effect multiplies as distributed resources increase due to technological advances in photovoltaic generation, storage and information technologies. In addition, the network effect must be taken into account in the emergence of disruptive services in this environment. Micro-Networks, local energy exchange markets, virtual power plants, are some of the concepts that appear to value the distributed resources as a whole. They will not be the only ones, it opens a range of possibilities, of services of added value that surely nor imagine today. " The electrical network is considered as the one of the largest machines deployed by man and models in how it was created was thought of uni-Direccioncionalidad; It will therefore be necessary to transfer the concept of ancillary services used in power systems to distribution networks. So, if many of us are generators and consumers, the power grid must be prepared for this new model. All this, in addition, in an environment of increasing electricity demand. The author admits the problem that the electrical networks were conceived in a unidirectional way and to change the sense to have bi-directionality of the electrons what is required is to obtain flexibility. That flexibility can in part be achieved with technology platform services. This flexibility will be the ability to dynamically change the behavior of all the agents and assets of the electrical system so that they can adapt to the continuous changes in demand. The big question is how to get that flexibility. For example, if the residential consumption at 21 hours of a specific day in Spain, there was the record of consumption schedule, then we disaggregated the residential demand as shown in the previous figure, in particular we estimate that at that time the illumination was 25% of consumption, i.e. 3.6 GWh. If we assume that we have a penetration of 10% of households and can regulate in some way 10% of the energy consumed in lighting, succeed a total reduction of the demand of 36 MWh which is roughly equivalent to a medium-large wind farm in Spain.  This amount of energy in the peak of the day of higher consumption has a lot of value. Similar exercises could be done with temperature regulation through smart thermostats/calefones. If we achieve that kind of dynamic demand management, that is part of the flexibility that is needed. On the other hand, let's talk about platforms or new platform-based economies, such as Uber, AIRBNB, which are technological platforms that have changed business. The platforms have reformulated business processes based on some important features such as:

• Integrating all the steps between production and consumption
• Converting products into services and these into experiences for the final consumer
• Converting data into raw material to establish very efficient models
• Trust is the success of a platform. Trust is the most valuable asset

Few platforms have burst into the electricity sector for now, we see them more in energy management of infrastructures, but in the coming years they are expected to appear with different business models. Although we do not know how the services and value added to the electrical services will evolve, they are already perceived as the technological giants as Google is already actively involved in the energy market. We can add that the growing competition between companies like Amazon and Google today is already moving inside our homes. Wall Street Journal recently reported that the two technology giants are focusing their attention on the electricity business: thermostats, loudspeakers, TVs, smart refrigerators… Domotics is implanted little by little and the two companies have come to the conclusion that the data of the energy we consume will be key in the future. Those data begin to be known for example if we iron or not, if we use the microwave, etc. David Crane, executive of NRG Energy, explains that "in 10 or 20 years, the most important electricity supplier in the U.S. will be Amazon or Google. They can provide lower costs and better service. " Whether or not the prediction is right, the truth is that so far these companies have already made significant investments in energy-related projects, from the development of electric cars, solar panels, battery improvement and the search for new ways of Store energy. Jeff Hamel, global director of energy for Google's company, commented: "We want to mobilize consumers. If we can make small changes in many people, that will be a great benefit for the suppliers, for the network, for the ecosystem and for the consumers themselves "in this new reality it is envisioned that new business models will appear where IT (technologies of the information) is already part of the solution, it is not a simple facilitating agent. The displacement of value towards the prosumer, the emergence of new value added services in a complex ecosystem and the assimilation of this ecosystem by the platforms, can provide us with the keys to find spaces of value in this uncertain Panorama. That is why the author of the article highlights the role of IT in the utilities and without a doubt that those organizations with a more medium and long term vision have detected it and have begun to re-organize.