Future-proofing Britain’s energy infrastructure
Few companies can afford to have their operations halted by unexpected downtime, but for the energy grid potential power failures could plunge parts of, or entire, countries into darkness. The cost of ensuring that Britain can switch its lights back on, following a failure, has grown by £12 million in the past year alone. Naturally, developed economies are not at high risk of power blackouts, apart from in the most extreme of circumstances. However, as the current infrastructure continues to age, industry leaders should begin to review the operational lifespan of this capital equipment to avoid blackouts in the future.
Martyn Williams, Managing Director of industrial automation software expert, COPA-DATA UK, discusses the role the Internet of Things (IoT) plays in the energy sector.
The state of Britain’s substations
Recent years have seen an influx of new standards, regulations and carbon reduction targets inundate the energy industry – not to mention a mounting customer demand. Combined with the introduction of Ofgem’s framework to set price controls for network companies (RIIO), the growing trend towards microgeneration and rising pressure to consider alternative generation technology, leading or managing an energy business has never been so complex.
What’s more, accommodating these adjustments with aging infrastructure – including over 400,000 substations, many of which are incredibly isolated – is both geographically and technologically challenging to say the least.
Substations were originally designed as islands of automation, unable to transfer data back to the network without manual intervention. For example, without connected infrastructure, an engineer would have had to physically visit the substation to export the assets and data necessary to conduct and examine a thorough off-site analysis of transmission data from a specific substation.
During the time it would take to complete this procedure, the information that the engineer had gathered would have become out of date and, as a result, the report would retain little value. Moreover, if the data shows any sign of failure or deterioration of power generation, it would be almost impossible to pinpoint the cause of the problem, as the engineer wouldn’t have access to any real-time or corresponding data.
