Whereas a few decades ago, electricity was national and of fossil origin, the model is now returning to a local level and sees the rise of renewable energies. Digital plays a big role in this redefinition of the market.
Whereas a few decades ago, electricity was national and of fossil origin, the model is now returning to a local level and sees the rise of renewable energies. The energy sector is therefore moving from a vertical model to a decentralized and cooperative model, owhere the consumer also becomes a producer through over-the-counter transactions.
Digital plays a big role in this redefinition of the market, which willaccelate in the years to come. 4 major technological trends are emerging for 2019:
At aggregators and suppliers “green“, a modexchange peer to peer* is emerging, which will make it possible in the medium term to give a social dimension to energy. For example, a self-consumer can share the surplus electricity produced by her solar panel with a relative or friend. Platforms for connecting producers and consumers, freed from the markets, are starting to emerge (such as the German Enyway or the American LO3), and benefit from the blockchain to establish smart contracts which guarantee the travsabilité of the energy exchanged and regulates monetary transactions between the actors. These digital marketplaces make it possible to decentralize energy and promote short circuits – you can buy electricity from your neighbor – to create a real energy community.
On the business side, the trend is to the DémastErialisation of the purchase of energy, with the emergence of aggregators of offers which make group purchasing, by negotiating contracts with suppliers for portfolios of individuals or companies (Selectra, Enoptea, Wattvalue)
Finally, power purchase agreement (PPA) appear on the European market ; or contracts between green energy producers and industrialists, which secure their long-term supply. A PPA was thus recently established between Google and the French Neoen, for the purchase of all of the electricity production of a power park.wind in Finland, at a negotiated price, for a predefined period.
2 – A new architecture of the electricity network
Historically, the network has been designed with a top-down approach, with a centralized market whose energy is then redistributed locally on a national scale. But, with the emergence of the markets privateés and decentralized producers, it is important to rethink this architecture of the electricity network. For a more local and flexible management of the network, it is now necessary to favor a bottom-up approach, owhere the infrastructure remains the sameme but with a mode of operation of the markets which evolves towards the platformization previously mentionede, and the revitalization of processes between suppliers, producers and networks.
This can help unblock the national electricity network by creating local networks, and open up regions. Brittany is, for example, completely energy dependent on the rest of France: the development of a local energy ecosystem could make it possible to revitalize the economy of its territory and create jobs.
In addition, since it is cheaper to consume locally produced energy than to import it, this would offer substantial savings to consumers. Energy itself only represents 30% of the electricity bill: the rest is the tax and the network.
3 – Artificial intelligence comes into energy
AI applied to energy production or consumption requires sensors that detect the parameters of an installation (temperature, power or vibration) and send the information to a database that an AI comes to exploit . Real-time data processing helps identify hardware anomalies or malfunctions in a process. This can, for example, make it possible to replace equipment more quickly, thereby maximizing energy efficiency while avoiding waste.
Producers now have such a quantity of statistics on the operation of the installations, that the next step is even that of predictive maintenance: the AI will be able to detect weak signals, predict the obsolescence of a machine part and order a new one, so that maintenance is optimized and production does not stop never.
4 – Robots to automate data flow tasks
In the energy markets, data flows today are so dense and immediate that it has become impossible for a human being to cope. This task is henceforth that of robots, and the place of humans has shifted to tasks of programming strategies, to be applied by said robots.
Initiated at most a few years ago, this automation of data processing is becoming the norm among energy suppliers, who are equipping themselves with algorithmic trading solutions to adapt to the speedé information flows and improve responsiveness on marketplaces in order to promote flexible behavior that stabilizes the national electricity grid.
From these 4 trends, one common point emerges: data management, as a new center of gravity for suppliers and aggregators. Technological management – that is to say the organization of data and its use by algorithms – is therefore essential to automate and accelerate processes, which will translate into savings on consumers’ electricity bills.
