Today, electricity distribution networks are required to do something they were never designed for: carry two-way traffic. Networks built to distribute power from a few large sources now need to take power from millions of roof-top solar installations and deliver it elsewhere.
Re-architecting the network to do this optimally is not an option, at least not in the near future. So, today’s networks need to be able to operate in this new mode at maximum efficiency.
In a session at the IoT Impact conference in Sydney on June 13, Patrick Bossert, managing director, Future Edge Consulting, will argue that this can be achieved through the use of living digital twins, greatly increasing the two-way carrying capacity of today’s electricity networks. He will address a session in the Trusted Technology and Data stream entitled: Living digital twins: it's all about the data.
Bossert says a key message in his presentation will be that “a living digital twin will enable us to get much more value from how we build infrastructure, how we maintain infrastructure and, ultimately the throughput and the level of service we can get from our infrastructure.”
He makes an important distinction between a living digital twin and most current realisations of the digital twin concept.
“Many of the digital twins you see today are really fancy 3D representations of the physical world, either at the asset level or at a bigger geospatial level,” Bossert says. “Very few are actually designed for and focussed on live data, and doing something with that data to drive different live outcomes.
“It's a bit of a one-way street at the moment. You can create a digital twin of a piece of equipment or a piece of plant using sensors and instrumentation to tell you how that thing's performing.”
He will argue that it is possible to close the loop and dynamically change the performance of an asset or a system, whether that system is an electricity distribution network, a road networks or a rail network.
“I think these are underutilised assets with a lot of potential to do more, and the living digital twin is the tool to enable that closed loop management.”
However, living digital twin technology is especially useful to optimise electricity distribution networks because they are now being asked to do something they were never designed for.
Bossert says, in New South Wales alone, a huge amount of energy produced by rooftop solar panels is going to waste, and, unless something is done, this will only increase.
“By 2026, there will be twice as much energy being generated from people's rooftops across regional and rural New South Wales than the network was designed to handle. You'll have almost seven gigawatts of power on a network that can carry maybe 2.8 to three.”
He says a living digital twin of the electricity distribution network that could achieve enable it to better handle power from thousands of solar panels would need granular data on the current carrying capacity of individual network elements such as sub-station transformers and transmission lines, and on current flows in the network.
After his presentation Bossert will join a panel discussion with David Cleminson, CEO of StratosQuo; Genene Kleppe, CEO of Digital Twinning Australia and Nimal Krishnan, client director, of Enzen. It will be moderated by Harman Singh, advanced automation and connected infrastructure leader, GHD Digital.
Patrick Bossert will take part in the session "Living digital twins: it's all about the data" at the IoT Impact conference in Sydney on 13 June, 2024, at the Great Hall, UTS. Purchase tickets and see the IoT Impact Conference agenda here.
