POWER January 2020 - 45

SMART GRID
From Smart Cities to Smarter
Services: The State of the
Energy Industry in 2020
How the energy industry and the cloud can partner to meet the challenges of smart
city development.
Rip Gerber
M
ore than half of our global population
resides in urban environments-and
by the end of this
century, the United Nations projects that
11 billion people, or 85% of the world's
population, will be urban. This growth
rate is fueling the rise of megacities-
urban areas with populations of 10 million
or more. By 2100, the world will be
home to as many as 20 megacities with
populations of more than 60 million each.
Clearly, the future of our world and
our cities are intertwined. Cities are
the engines of the global economy and
the destination for the largest continuing
global migration in human history.
And it's not just population growth that
makes cities so central to our collective
future; it's the rising environmental
costs of powering and delivering the
services that allow cities to function.
Cities consume 65% of our primary
energy sources and are responsible for
70% of total greenhouse gas emissions.
From Los Angeles to Beijing, New Delhi
to Mexico City, governments, private industry,
and residents alike are striving to
balance growth and sustainability. Cities
and megacities are here to stay, but if we
don't make our cities smarter, humans
may not be here to stay as long.
The Vision of the Smart City
It's no surprise that the concept of the
" smart city " is the consensus way forward
to create the sustainable city of the
future. It is an enormously attractive vision
of using digital technology to transform
and improve virtually every aspect
of city life and operations for the better.
The foundation of the smart city is the
creation of a parallel digital infrastructure
that mirrors the real-world infrastructure
of the physical city (Figure 1). It consists
of an integrated system of automated
networks, sensors, electronics, energy
storage, and other devices that use artificial
intelligence (AI) and machine learning
44
(ML) to autonomously manage the city's
physical operations and services. The goal
is to make cities more efficient and costeffective,
while significantly reducing pollution
and improving the quality of life.
The challenge lies in how to get to
this parallel construct. " There's broad
alignment on where we're going, " said
Joanna Hubbard, co-founder and CEO of
Electron, a UK-based company specializing
in block chain solutions for the energy
industry, " but no alignment on how
we're going to get there. "
Challenge and Opportunity
The momentum toward increased urbanization
makes our cities ground zero for the
re-examination of environmental policies
and solutions at scale. Like all great visions,
the opportunity smart cities represent is immense,
but the devil is in the details.
An International Data Corp. (IDC) report
predicts that spending toward smart city
development will grow to nearly $190 billion
by 2023, one of the largest growth opportunities
the energy industry has seen
in decades. Realizing the potential of this
investment will require levels of change
management and execution that the energy
industry has never before experienced.
Digital transformation can be a complex,
multi-faceted challenge. In the energy
industry, some liken it to a Rubik's
Cube with 54 faces. Adding further complexity
to the challenge for energy providers
and utilities in the U.S. is that, to a
large degree, they must coordinate their
digital transformation strategies with cities
within their service areas.
There are several major challenges
confronting smart city development as
2020 begins. The first is how to obtain the
data needed for the smart city's central
nervous system to function. That's going
to require a lot of sensors. To cite just one
example, San Diego installed 4,000 sensors
toward the goal of using real-time
data to help with traffic congestion and
other transportation issues. Although not
www.powermag.com
1. Smart cities use a complex network of interconnected
sensors, devices, and software to
improve efficiency, enhance reliability, and make
systems more sustainable. Source: Shutterstock
insignificant, those 4,000 sensors are just
one aspect of smart city development.
One estimate suggests that the needs of
all smart city developments will require
trillions of sensors in the years ahead.
Now consider how we're going to power
these trillions of sensors. " We have not
built one trillion batteries in the history of
mankind, " Harlan Zeine, founder and CTO
of Ossia, a wireless power company,
points out. " Yet, we're supposed to make
enough batteries to power one trillion
sensors within three years? "
Finally, there is the issue of who owns
the data that will be collected by these trillions
of sensors. Concerns over data privacy
and data sovereignty are proving to
be particularly thorny for smart city planning.
Just recently, the City of Toronto halted
Canada's largest and most-prominent
smart city development program over citizens'
fears that the digital company behind
the development would have too much access
to their private data, infringing upon
their rights and usurping the traditional
functions of municipal government.
The Toronto experience goes directly
to the heart of the overall philosophical
question of how to approach solving for
any or all of the solutions involved with
smart city development. In other words,
which vision of smart city development?
" Do cities adopt gradual, single-point upgrades? "
asked Panagiotis Tsarchopoulos,
the head of IRIS, the European Union's
major smart city research program. " Or,
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