Making Smarter Grids A Reality - Interview with Gerhard Seyrling, Senior Vice President Innovation & Performance Improvement -
AREVA Transmission and Distribution

November 10, 2008  

 
Q: What are the main challenges the T&D industry is facing today?
 
Gerhard Seyrling: Electricity networks and energy systems all over the world are facing 3 major challenges:

• The first of these challenges is linked to demographics and economic development, which bring about increasing demand for electricity that existing ageing networks and supply-side models will not be able to provide in an efficient way.
  This means we need to find ways to optimize both networks and the efficiency of investments.
  
• The second challenge is linked to climate change, with countries and governments all over the world moving towards an environmentally-friendlier energy mix that often includes more nuclear, more renewable and more small-scale generators (or Distributed Generation). This mix is therefore one in which citizens will play a larger role.
  This means that grids will need to be greener, reducing both CO2 emissions and losses in transmission and distribution.
  

The third challenge is linked to the increasing size and complexity of our grids. Grids now involve larger players, more interconnections between regional networks, and generally speaking more stakeholders such as distributors, suppliers and energy traders.
This means we need to provide for a more complex grid in which there is, for instance, 2-way power flow, and for the reliable management of vastly greater amounts of data. 
 
These are huge challenges! So huge that it would appear that we need to revolutionize today’s grids….  However, the grid cannot be changed all at once and so shall have to evolve – but with technological breakthroughs!
 

Q: So, what is Smart Grid, what does it consist of?
 
GS: The challenges facing today’s grids are such that we need to re-invent the grids and make them more efficient, environmentally-friendlier, and more reliable – in a word: smarter. This is the Smart Grid concept!
So Smart Grid is obviously not something you can just buy off the shelf. It is a change of gear, a new way of thinking, one that involves demand-side responses, backwards-compatible components and upgradeability, state-of-the-art automation and telecommunications infrastructure – in other words, a lot of stakeholders all along the value chain.
 
This is why we, at AREVA, believe in Smarter Grids, achieved by smarter technologies and smarter teamwork across the electricity value chain.
 
Q: Are there any SmartGrid solutions available today?
 
GS:
Innovation is an essential pillar in our growth strategy, as reflected in the 20% increase of our R&D investment last year, and in our plan to double this amount by 2010.
 
And one of the priorities of our R&D program is smarter technology for smarter grids. These are not distant dreams: the good news is that solutions already exist!
 
Take for instance our newly available Online Stability solution.
 
This new solution allows our customers to assess more accurately the status of their electricity grid and hence optimize the use of their assets. This solution directly improves the efficiency of existing networks.
 
It is already in deployment in South Africa, and we are also actively involved in the US Online Stability project, with the Tennessee Valley Authority, as well as in China, with North China Grid. We have also provided North Grid China with a visualization system for secure grid operation that has contributed to securing the electricity supply in Beijing during last summer’s Olympics. 
 
Another example would be the recent development project with PJM, as you know one of the major utilities in the US, for a latest-generation control system to optimize the efficiency and reliability of the network and to better select energy sources so as to reduce impact on the environment.
 
I would like also to mention our e-terra solution range. Providing real-time situation awareness in the generalized Grid security framework, enabling our customers to prevent blackouts, providing fast and reliable network analysis as many as benefits customers can take from our E-terra Vision, E-terra transmission and E-terra settlement solutions.
 
But smarter technologies is only one part of the answer to the Smart Grid challenge – the other is smarter teamwork.
 
Q: What do we mean by that?
 
GS: Smarter teamwork involves partnerships. And at AREVA, partnerships, like smarter grids, are not another distant dream. They lie at the core of our growth strategy, and can involve customers, suppliers, universities and expert networks, technology leaders and integrators, and of course local associations.
 
Let me give you a couple of examples of how we can make partnerships work.
 
The first type of partnerships traditionally involves a supplier-customer relationship.
 
Basically, working closely with customers brings better understanding of their needs, and hence opportunities to exceed their expectations. But partnering with customers can also mean sharing our expertise and discussing together how best to anticipate future needs.
 
To explore together key topics of joint interest across the industry, we have set up so-called User Groups. 
These Groups hold meetings that are 100% co-owned and co-organized with our customers. We now have User Groups meetings every year in Europe, in the US, in Australia and in the Middle-East.
A joint Board determines the topics that are of most interest for both AREVA and our customers– and these topics are then discussed in-depth during the User Group meetings.
Based on the feedback from these User Groups, we may launch new strategic R&D projects, with the certainty that the results will be of current or future value and interest for our customers and for ourselves.
One such example is obviously the Smart Grid.
 
Another example is our post-CIGRE Paris event, which is designed for informal networking and discussions.
The main theme for this year’s event was how best to combat Climate Change in the energy sector. Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr. R.K. Pachauri – co-winner with Al Gore – was our guest of honor, reminding us that one quarter of humanity is today without access to electricity.
Unsurprisingly, improving supply and distribution efficiency and increasing R&D pro-activity were seen as two key contributors to reducing the impact of climate change.
 
User Groups and post-CIGRE events are particular examples of AREVA’s approach to partnerships with customers that have led to lasting mutual benefits.
 
 Q: From what we understand, you are working a lot with your customers but do you also partner with other players in the industry?
 
GS: Major integrators and software companies have been managing multi-site, multi-national networks for many years – but only very recently in the energy sector.
On the other hand, the expertise of historical energy players like AREVA lies in our knowledge of power networks components.
 
The complementarities are obvious - meaning that partnering with these relatively new players can help accelerate product and service development, and can contribute to the design of complete solutions that may include applications beyond our core business.
 
By working together, integrators, whether IT or telecom companies, can contribute to the seamless deployment of complex solutions while software companies can provide the bricks on which to build solutions based on open standards.
 
Partnerships with universities and expert networks are also key in our global development strategy. They ensure that advanced research and up-to-the-minute information on ongoing projects help us avoid a too narrow market focus.
 
As an example, three years ago, we created the AREVA T&D - Tsinghua University Research Centre in China. Tsinghua University is one of the most prestigious universities in China in the field of electrical engineering.
The recently signed partnership brings obvious mutual benefits - it will help Tsinghua University become a major player in global T&D research, and it will help us to better understand and address China’s specific technological challenges, thus hopefully contributing to the modernization of its electricity network.
 
We also want to partner with local specialist associations.
 
There are 2 reasons why the involvement of local associations is likely to be an important element in Smart Grids:

• one is because there cannot be a one-size-fits-all approach
• and the other is because local communities will most probably have a larger stake in tomorrow’s grids than they have in today’s.  
   

Q: Mister Seyrling, thank you very much for this highlight on AREVA T&D’s vision on Smarter Grids, would you like to add anything to conclude?
 
GS: Thank you, I would like to say again that the dramatic changes we are witnessing in our industry today call for more ambitious R&D and reinforced partnerships across the value chain.
 
The Smart Grid of tomorrow will come from the smarter grids of today. Let us be smart in how we address this exciting challenge.