Australia's energy sector readies for smart grids

Peter Dinham
Tuesday, 20 October 2009 06:35

IT Industry - Market

According to Bickerstaff, companies will need to develop strong partnerships with telcos and technology vendors that specialise in this area, as well as “build new IT focused skill sets into their workforce.

“The respondents believe the most significant investment for smart grids will be in ICT applications and infrastructure to enable and manage the increase in bi-directional data traffic. Respondents also highlighted an increased necessity for data storage and control technologies, such as SCADA.

“The energy industry is facing a similar modernisation transition to what we witnessed in the telecoms sector. Energy companies will undergo significant transformation, but when they emerge from this transition period, we are likely to see very different companies, potentially with new consumer engagement strategies and offerings.”

In other findings, the study showed that Australia’s energy companies are currently highly focused on collating information and a substantial number are looking overseas to learn from the successes of international projects.

Logica says that the respondents viewed Europe as having a closer alignment to local (Australian) projects and considered Europe to be currently leading the world in terms of rolling out smart metering, demand management and distributed generation, with “pilots and projects underway in Italy, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, France, Canada and the US all being observed and analysed by respondents.”

Bickerstaff  said the study also revealed that as a result of smart grid adoption the “average lifecycle of up to 30% of an electricity distributor’s assets will shift from 40 years to 5-10 years, which means technology and investment decision cycles will change significantly.”

Australian energy companies surveyed for the study included Respondents of the study included Aurora Energy, Integral Energy, SP AusNet, Jemena, Powercor-CitiPower, Horizon Power, Western Power, EnergyAustralia, Ergon Energy, ENERGEX, ETSA Utilities, Eraring Energy, and Sparq.