Smart Grid Implementation increases 25% in the past year
February 8, 2012
The Microsoft/OSIsoft Worldwide Utility Industry Survey 2012 has been released. The survey polled 216 professionals within electric, gas and water utility industries around the world and highlighted the challenges utilities face as they move from planning to actual smart-grid implementation.
Some of the findings include:
- 25% increase since 2011 in the number of utilities companies that have implemented smart-grid technology.
- 28% of companies surveyed are still in the planning phase
- 24% still have not started adopting any smart-grid technology.
- 63% of participants expect their budgets for these technologies to increase over the next two or three years.
- 20% of those surveyed said technical issues kept them from moving forward, which was a larger group than in last year’s survey.
The survey showed that more utilities companies are adding new devices to the grid and incorporating new data sets into their operational capabilities. However, many of these organizations are encountering significant interoperability and integration challenges.
When asked how they are addressing the big data challenge to the smart grid, nearly one quarter of surveyed companies referenced the importance of business intelligence solutions. These tools and systems are critical to managing and analyzing large amounts of data, which in turn enables companies to make smarter and more proactive business decisions based on actionable information.
The survey also indicated that 72% of respondents do not have an enterprise wide scalable architecture in place to support current and future smart-grid deployments. SERA provides a detailed framework for existing technologies that will enable bidirectional power and information flows around the grid, with particular attention to standards, interoperability and reduced costs. SERA also provides the first conceptual framework for adding cloud services to the development of the smart-energy ecosystem.
