Over the coming decade the electricity sector must face increasing demand, increasing regulation, and fundamental changes in the way that electricity grids work on a day-to-day basis.
New fluctuating energy sources must be integrated into existing grids, and many of today’s customers may take on a second role as suppliers, writes Jim Morrish, a founding partner at Transforma Insights.
The deployment of new technology is critical to enabling the changes that must happen, and a wide variety of technology-based solutions are being deployed in the electricity industry right now. These range from smart- metering applications through to remote asset monitoring and control solutions and solutions to better enable a remote workforce.
According to research undertaken by Inmarsat, investment in IoT solutions overall is expected to be significant for electricity utilities, and with cost reduction and increased efficiency come related benefits in sustainability.
But there are challenges, including in the domains of connectivity, security and available skillsets. Service providers to the electricity sector can help to alleviate many of these problems for their potential clients by delivering robust, sophisticated, and secure applications that can be easily integrated into electricity utility operations.
Any service provider seeking to deliver solutions to electricity utilities will need to invest to ensure the delivery of high-quality solutions, and it is likely that working closely with ecosystem partners will significantly ease the development of such solutions.
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