How smart grids solve the entire global energy problem

The global power industry will be severely impacted by cheap renewable electricity available in 450 million homes worldwide by 2026. Disruptive technologies in the IoT (Internet of Things) sector and in battery storage will create a booming “smart grids” industry with multiple business opportunities.

Why this is so is explained in a new report called How Smart Grids Solve the Global Energy Problem, a study about the effect of acceleration of solar power generation and battery storage in the home.

Over 25 pages, this executive summary is about smart grids and how power utilities and consumers are beginning to add internet connectivity to their grid and home assets. Consumer-oriented power generation will lead to surpluses which will alter the fundamental economics of energy.

How Smart Grids Solve the Global Energy Problem looks at the fledgling smart grids sector of today and views it as the beginning of a large transition away from existing electricity capacity to a series of decentralized networks distributing power on the edge.

Facilitated by solar panels and battery storage, the vast majority of homes will be able to generate and store the bulk of their own electricity requirements. In order for this to happen, each home will need some form of economical home electricity storage – a battery.

Along the way, smart grids will present big opportunities for utilities to offer smart-home-as-a-service (SHaaS) packages in a similar manner to how consumers take pay TV and broadband.

An expanding smart grid market will see the emergence of CPE (Customer Premises Equipment), IoT-based solutions and cloud software to reduce energy usage and therefore consumer bills.

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Pulling together a raft of recent research and analysis and presented as a to-the-point executive briefing, How Smart Grids Solve the Global Energy Problem, amongst other themes examined:

• Presents two current case studies of Honda HEMS (Home Energy Management System and Panasonic Fujisawa Smart Town involving solar panel arrays and power storage units, which can potentially be synced  by an API with smart home ecosystems such as Apple’s HomeKit, Google’s Nest or any other open source IoT solution;
• Gives examples of IoT solutions based around the HEMS system, coupled with WiFi, ZigBee and cloud data  – battery storage, smart metering, SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) microcontroller and integration with PEVs (Plug-In Electric Vehicles);
• Argues that the Tesla GigaFactory, when up and producing ½ million lithium ion batteries a year, will galvanize demand and expectations for the whole smart grid industry;
• Explores why current utility billing methods could be turned up on their head and how revenue generation opportunities can come from Blockchain-based IoT billing solutions such as the Ethereum market place.

Who should read this report?

This is essential research for those exploring opportunities and threats of the smart grid space; power utilities, suppliers of power generation equipment and battery; semiconductor and chipmakers; cloud data storage companies, systems vendors integrating IoT solutions; apps and software developers; strategy formulators and buyers; consultants; investors, financial analysts and any company with an interest in the future of smart energy.

Author: Alex Davies, Founding Editor of RIoT (Rethink IoT) and it forecasts the disruption to the global energy market as a result of the introduction of IoT and battery storage. The report is 25 pages long.