Mind over meter: how data can deliver smarter utilities

“Minimising wasted electricity through precise energy management and monitoring — particularly when that electricity is fossil-fuel based — reduces the tonnes of CO2 per kilowatt of electricity consumed.”

Power partners

Sydney-based IoT-solutions provider Thinxtra works with Brisbane-based Luceo, which provides energy-data platforms, to provide real-time IoT-enabled energy monitoring for customers, including Energy Queensland.

Thinxtra chief operating officer Sam Sharief says by installing IoT devices in homes and businesses, an energy provider can get a clear picture of the network load, not just at substation level, but right down to the individual property.

“As a result, they can plan their supply efforts, projects and initiatives better,” he says. “Having that holistic view means that they can lower their costs and reduce their carbon footprint. A lot of efficiencies can be gained if you have better insights. Having a near real-time view of what’s going on in the electricity network means you can do things a lot better.”

Luceo chief technology officer Adrian Knack says the benefits of monitoring extend beyond the financial and the carbon. Real-time data at the individual property level can also save lives, not just by picking up safety issues, but also in speeding up reaction times when critical services fail.

“If you have a life-support customer and that area has an outage in their power network, within seconds, the network is notified of that power outage rather than waiting for somebody to call the network,” he says.

“That timeliness means that that person who’s running on a critical service has that service maintained more quickly.”

Future benefits

Sung believes the environmental benefits of energy monitoring are only going to become more profound as the network evolves and distributed energy resources become more important.

“As the electricity system is increasingly decentralised, with more and more generation, storage and flexible demand resources being deployed ‘behind the meter’ in homes and businesses, advanced energy monitoring and metering will enable us to take advantage of these resources and ensure zero-emissions electricity is consumed when it is most needed,” he says.

Knack agrees that energy monitoring will prove increasingly useful. “Distributed energy resources are basically pushing power upstream in the system ... it feeds in both directions,” he says. “Having visibility of this in real time means you can create operating envelopes to control those energy resources, so that you don’t overload or underload your network at any given point.”

This might ultimately lead to less spending on infrastructure, Knack says. “It means you can make better decisions about the infrastructure that you provide, so you get better bang for your buck.”

From a business point of view, energy monitoring can improve a utility’s operational efficiency, lower costs and enhance the customer experience. Thinxtra, for example, also offers IoT solutions for gas and water utilities, supply chains, transport and property management. And Sharief says that with an ever-increasing focus on ESG reporting, data, for any business, can be priceless.

“If you’ve got accurate ESG reporting, which is driven by data, it will improve your credibility in the marketplace,” he says. “It’s no secret consumers and businesses increasingly prefer to engage with companies taking sustainability seriously. Once providers - whether it’s electricity, gas or water - demonstrate how they are taking responsibility, demand will increase, and combine with operational and financial outcomes to drive a stronger competitive position.”

To learn more about smart utilities solutions visit Thinxtra.