How the Smart Grid Will Enable the New Energy Economy: A CSC Perspective

Author:

CSC

Windfarm The utility industry is in the early days of a profound transformation from emphasis on energy value to emphasis on information value.

With electricity demand growing 1.5 – 3.0% annually, it is not realistic to think that we can build enough coal-fired plants to keep up with surging electrical demand given the rising opposition to global warming. The very daunting task of reducing C02 while increasing generation capacity leads to an energy supply and demand dilemma.

Smart, secure, sustainable

CSC believes that the utility of the future must be Smart, Secure and Sustainable.

Smart: Utilities will have to leverage new technologies, new business process and new business models to deal with the challenges mentioned earlier. Most critical for the utility is the capability to insure quality and reliability while providing customers demand response interactions, and the support that variable power supply from non-utility provides.
Secure: As part of our national critical infrastructure, electric utilities are the source of significant cyber attack. In the current trend where the communication network is integrated with the electrical network — that at times leads to penetration of transmission and distribution networks — utilities will have to secure the energy supply.
Sustainable: Utilities have great exposure to climate-change regulation and will be required to anticipate these as they deploy new technologies and renovate their infrastructure. Integration of renewable generation into the Grid became one of the keys to the success of the utility industry transformation.

Download How the Smart Grid Will Enable the New Energy Economy (PDF) to read our perspective.