A New Year always brings its surprise bag of trends and predictions. Based on statistics or just wishes, the electric grid has deeply changed and keeps moving forward. These selected articles and posts will give you the insight you need to better understand the coming year.

Regulations: Coal Cold, Helpless Wind

Smart Grids

The Intelligent Grid Enters a New Dimension

Distributed renewables

Distributed renewables are the spearhead of smart grid, shifting the power from utilities to utilities AND its “prosumers” (professional or proactive consumers). Solar panels, geothermal systems or small windmills enable consumers to have a better control over sources of energy, decreasing their dependency on energy providers.

A Few Meters Away

Smart meters are the key innovation in the realm of utility consumption. They open the door of big data and allow companies to use the power of analytics, as well as automation. Adjusting demand and supply is not a manual task anymore. Nevertheless the smart meters do not make the world rosier, for the time being.

Social Media

Live tweeting and social media posts have made communication a little bit more easier between customers and utilities. The best example is planned and unplanned outages, when utilities inform customers concerned by a black-out or vice-versa, even though people are encouraged to directly contact utilities by phone to signal an outage in their area.

Solar is the new stellar source of energy

Spare Power: Bid on it

Nuclear or no nuclear

Cyber Attacks

Physical Threats

Mutual Aid & Emergency Response

Electric Vehicles

2015 should be a very dynamic year for utility companies, industry partners and consumers. The sector’s landscape is changing in a faster way. Technologies have opened new opportunities to make the grid smarter, manage assets more efficiently and ensure a better match between demand and supply.

Go further

For a deeper insight on how technologies are changing the utility sector, we invite you to watch 10 Trends and Technologies to Impact IT Over the Next Five Years, a webinar recently published by the consulting firm Gartner.

Learn more about our Mutual Aid & Critical Spares Management Solution for Utilities: Make electrical equipment procurement easy and efficient. Locate a matching power transformer before a failure occurs!