Grid Flexibility Optimization through Digital Twins, Edge Computing, Communication for 2030

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Written by Paul Wiseman for Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Today's power grids are stressed from all sides. Data centers get the headlines, but demands from electric vehicles, heating and industry are also expanding, along with what are called "decentralized distributed energy resources," including rooftop solar and batteries mixed with traditional power plants on the supply side. Supply and demand can fluctuate quickly, so detection and response must be almost instantaneous.

How can grid managers improve reliability? Digital twins, increased edge computing, and connecting that edge computing with better data communications are some options. Discussing them were representatives from three suppliers in a webinar entitled "Optimizing Grid Flexibility and Resilience--Through Digital Twins, Edge Computing, and Communications." The event was based on a white paper collaboration among Dell Technologies, Nokia, and Enscryb, the latter of which is a Nokia venture.

"You've got this load growth that's happened, particularly in electrification, heat and transport," said Stavros Sachinis of Enscryb. He continued, "I don't think anyone really expected the dramatic load growth from data centers, particularly driven by AI [artificial intelligence]."

Sachinis explained Enscryb as being made "to create digital twin simulations of their distributed energy systems, their ecosystems, modeling the impact, and then using software to deploy strategies, flexibility strategies in real time."

Some of the rising demand arises within the grid operators themselves, said Ken Rabedeau, energy segment leader for Nokia. "We've already seen lots of our customers ask us for communication for robots to monitor transformers in a substation or drones to be able to do vegetation management." Collaboration will be required to efficiently manage and benefit from those tools, he said. Running applications at the edge will speed response time and reduce communication traffic.

Change is already ramping up, said Tom Ledoux of Dell. "Over the last five, six years it's changing dramatically because we've got all these new energy resources coming into the grid. And there's got to be a lot more feedback and communication going both directions. And you've got to make this change in real time without any disruption to the current grid as it is."

Can grid managers make physical changes fast enough to keep up? Sachinis wonders. "The centralized and decentralized grid, massive growth of load, resiliency challenge are all in the background where I think it's likely impossible to build and reinforce the grid fast enough to deal with that." Orchestration is key, and using digital twins can inform that option.

While some edge computing already exists, even that must improve communications and flexibility to keep up with the frantic expansion, Ledoux said. In simpler times, every edge computer could do a single main task.

"But what we've seen now is that we're adding so many new functions so quickly, the edge really needs to be more of a general-purpose computing environment because we're going to quickly change what's happening, what's coming in, being able to add new functions very quickly, but without having to go out to 1,000 different locations and install a new device," Ledoux declared.

What he called "software-defined infrastructure" through digital twins will be required to enable that flexibility. Digital twins allow for testing and experimentation of new procedures and equipment, to find the best option before implementation.

Implementing International Standards
All new ideas and options, such as digital twins, must conform to power industry regulations and standards. To implement the increasing interconnectivity of power systems, the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) was founded in 1995. It issued its IEC 61850 standards shortly after 2000, defining communication protocols for intelligent electronic devices at power substation.

That informs a lot of decisions up front, said Rabedeaux. "Its primary benefit was to be flexible to modernize energy systems and its ability to unify all the various different communications protocols the interaction between different types of equipment, such as protection and control or measurement devices, is critical."

He added that many utilities are upgrading their edge computing to "full virtualization," although he did not define that term. He added that the National Energy Regulatory Commission (NERC) "has also been working on virtualization and where it can benefit. It actually adds a good bit of resiliency to go towards virtualization."

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