Webinar Report: 5G for the Energy Sector

GLOBAL5G WEBINAR "5G: what will it change for the Energy industry? "

In this report, we give an overview of our 1st webinar entitled, "5G: what will it change for the Energy industry?", which was organised by Trust-IT in collaboration with IDC as part of our analysis on how 5G can benefit diverse vertical industries across Europe. 

Taking place on 28 June 2018, the goal of the webinar was to offer insights into the opportunities and challenges that 5G brings to European Utilities in the coming years

Agenda

• Welcome & Introduction, Daniela Rao, Senior Research & Consulting Director, IDC Italy
• 5G potential & challenges for European Energy sector, Daniela Rao, IDC Italy
• Joint Opportunities for Energy/5G Use Cases, Javier Valino, Energy Sector Research and Innovation Engineer, Atos
• NRG-5: Enabling Smart Energy as a Service, Alistair Duke, Principal Researcher, Research & Innovation, BT
• Enabling Smart Energy as a Service via 5G Mobile Network advances, Massimo Bertoncini, Experienced Project Manager of R&D Projects, Experienced Visionary Studies, Engineering
• Questions & Answers
• Conclusions

The recorded webinar is available here on our website under Webinars 

Key messages

Many external factors have a direct or indirect impact on the European utilities business. Energy technology is shaking traditional utility value creation at its core. Not only is it fuelling a shift in the way energy is produced, distributed, and consumed, but also in the ownership of the production capacity itself. In parallel, digital technologies are disrupting decade-old processes, creating opportunities and threats to the traditional utility business model.

The business potential of 5G in the energy vertical is expected to be very high through the support of critical machine type communication (MTC) applications of energy grid protection and control and the massive volume of MTC type applications coming from smart metering.

The performance and flexibility promised by 5G will enable a communication infrastructure capable of supporting many use cases for 2020 and beyond, starting from distributed generation and storage of power and micro-grids.

5G technologies will play an essential role in the development of the Internet of Energy (IoE), the upgrading and automating of electricity infrastructures for energy producers. Enhanced connectivity, low latency and edge computing features of 5G communications will allow energy production to move forward more efficiently and cleanly with the least amount of waste. In order to manage efficiently the energy supply and demand in the power grid, energy routers will be able to adjust dynamically the energy distribution in the grid, which is so called the Internet of Energy.

With 5G real-time communications and access to all disperse devices, the current problem of renewable energy systems curtailment can be smoothened. Better data monitoring and more precise energy generation and consumption forecasting will pave the way to fully implement the Internet of Energy.

The “last mile” of the smart energy network represents an ideal vertical for demonstrating the added value of 5G: currently little communication or measurement capability in last mile infrastructure, the need for enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB), massive machine-type communications (mMTC), ultra-reliable low latency communications (URLLC).

Regarding this development, the 5G PPP project NRG-5 is exploring the following 5G applications:

Smart Grid applications: supervisory monitoring (cyber & physical), fault localisation, isolation/self-healing and energy re-routing, with reduced latency, very high availability and security (uRLLC).

Advanced metering applications: massive, lock-in free integration of end-user infrastructure with more capacity (eMBB & mMTC).

Smart Electric Vehicle charging management: 5G technology should offer more stringent requirements for both latency and capacity.

Although Energy utilities transition towards more decentralised renewable-oriented systems will also bring new issues for network management, automation and programmability, security, resilience, scalability and portability.

NRG-5 will address these issues with the goal of rendering the deployment, operation and management of existing and new communications and energy infrastructures (in the context of the Smart Energy-as-a-Service) easier, safer, more secure and resilient from an operational and financial point of view.

Conclusions

5G technology will support the next wave of smart grid features and efficiency, integrating many devices into the grid through low-cost connections, managing demand and load balance, helping to reduce electricity peaks and reduce energy costs. However, realising the 5G full potential for the energy sector will require many challenges and changes within the industry, including critical concerns like trust, control and liability, as well as a favourable policy and regulatory environment.