By Dean Oskvig, President & CEO B&V Energy, Black & Veatch Holding Company
Dean Oskvig, President & CEO B&V Energy, Black & Veatch Holding Company
Electric utilities are in the midst of a significant business transformation. They must align their power generation portfolios to address increasing air emission and surface water regulations as well as state-mandated Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS). Many traditional power plants are aging and nearly 60 gigawatts of coal-fired capacity will be shut down by 2020. Yet investment in new generation capacity lags that scheduled for retirement. Utilities are challenged to predict future demand as electric vehicles, distributed generation resources, energy storage systems and demand response programs gain traction.
Outside the regulatory sphere, the industry presses on with a host of challenges and opportunities: consolidation to grow scale; the need to reduce operating costs and improve efficiencies; exploration of adjacent/new markets to further growth; determining how to harness low-cost natural gas; and improving overall disaster response to protect the nation’s vital power infrastructure.
This disruption, propelled by a confluence of market dynamics and shifting technologies, will result in a leaner, more nimble electric utility industry that will be able to better deliver on its primary mandate: reliability. But getting there takes new approaches and smarter tools. The need to do more with less has driven an unprecedented level of utility technology deployments including Automated Metering Infrastructure (AMI), cloud services, and data analytics. These investments are paving the way for “Adaptive Planning” analytics that allow utilities to develop and modify plans in response to changing conditions, enabling them to better embrace a dynamic future with confidence.
Managing Interdependencies
Adaptive Planning is a dynamic master planning process that uses advanced analytics to address interdependencies within and across activities. It provides an understanding of the interrelated effects of alternative courses of action, manages a diverse range of planning initiatives and requirements, and enables rapid asset, project and planning portfolio adjustments. Leveraging cloud-based computational capabilities, adaptive planning solutions use data to create, compare and optimize complex planning decisions, including the visual identification of investment priorities using a risk-based approach. Adaptive planning solutions apply a common asset framework across all areas so that interdependencies between asset management, capital prioritization and operational effectiveness can be fully
“Adaptive Planning is a dynamic master planning process that uses advanced analytics to address interdependencies within and across activities”
As these solutions create greater insights into utility operations and plans, data-driven forecasting capabilities and the ability to respond to rapidly changing events will empower utility leaders to maximize the performance of their physical and personnel resources. For organizations that have provided services, in some instances for more than a century, this will represent the greatest transformation in utility operations in decades.