为明天提供动力：塑造能源未来的挑战和趋势

DIEGO BUFFADiego Buffa graduated fromthe University of Genova witha degree in electronicengineering and has spentmost of his career focusingon software and embeddeddevices. He has been withWind River for more than fouryears, with a concentrationon industrial accounts in theEMEA region.KARIM DIOURYKarim Dioury graduated fromthe University of Paris with aPhD in microelectronics. Hehas spent most of his careerfocusing on software forelectronics design andembedded systems withinthe semiconductor, energy,and process automationmarkets. He has been withWind River for more than 14years, with a concentrationon industrial accounts in theEMEA region. Consumption may almost double in the evening in winter, for example, orat noon in the summer in hot countries. Usage of electric cars will increaseunpredictable energy demand.In the near future, we may also face a new challenge: a possible decrease intraditional energy consumption. LED lights, low-energy housing, and energyefficiency in general will translate to lower traditional consumption, whileelectric cars, ebikes, and other electric vehicles will dramatically increaseconsumption volatility and predictable energy demand.The price of energy will also be regulated by production and demand, whichcould make prices volatile if that production and demand are not wellbalanced. We have already seen the serious impact of this on the Europeaneconomy in 2022.To summarize, we need a massive investment in the energy network. Thenthe ongoing challenge will be to monitor, measure, and optimize energy use ina modern and smart grid.CURRENT INDUSTRY TRENDSKarim, you’ve been in the trenches of energy distribution for more than adecade. Tell us about the trends in this part of the industry, and help us knowwhat we should pay attention to.Karim Dioury:Given all the challenges that Diego mentioned requiringinvestments, we know that the old way of operating is no longer applicable.Radical shifts are needed.Traditionally, energy solutions relied on dedicated operational technology(OT) solutions for protection and control of applications connected to centralSCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) control rooms. Theseturnkey solutions and costly approaches are no longer applicable to anautonomous smart grid.There is an inevitable trend to take advantage of machine learning andartificial intelligence, but this requires a shift from a centralized-controlarchitecture to a distributed system able to autonomously balance theenergy in the grid. Data generated by the grid or coming from the cloud willbe integrated into the smart grid itself to balance the network and optimizeenergy efficiency.New solutions should be flexible and updatable, but this requires shorteningthe development and deployment cycle.Another important trend is the decoupling of software and hardware to enablethe usage of cheaper, general-purpose hardware.Decoupling applications from hardware, plus AI infusion and microservicearchitecture adoption, have already been done in telco. It is also happening inauto and in just about any market moving to digitalization.The energy market is undergoing a transformation similar to what ishappening in the telco market: Tier 1 suppliers are providing high-availabilitysoftware platforms, with applications running in a virtualized environmentand/or in containers in a Kubernetes cluster. “We need a massiveinvestment in theenergy network.Then the ongoingchallenge will be tomonitor, measure,and optimize energyuse in a modernand smart grid.”—Diego Buffa“We see that todaythere is a lot offocus on transmis-sion and distribu-tion, especially interms of modern-ization, whereconvergence of ITand OT technolo-gies may really playan important role.”—Karim Dioury“New solutionsshould be flexibleand updatable,but this requiresshortening thedevelopment anddeployment cycle.”—Karim Dioury 2 We can say that one big trend is shifting from traditional protection,automation, and control (PAC) applications to virtual PAC applications (vPAC).This is similar to what happened in the telecom industry, when it moved fromnetwork functions to virtualized network functions.This is driven mainly by the fact that renewable energy has becomeincreasingly popular with consumers, but many electricity providers aren’tyet equipped to add these resources to the grid. Energy companies need tobalance the workload to manage distributed energy resources (DERs), andscalability and flexibility are key. The ability to reconfigure, scale, expand,or reduce a substation based on the demand and production of energybecomes a huge benefit.Of course, smart grids and renewable energy are not the only reasonsfor this trend. There are many other advantages that virtualization andcontainerization add, such as cost savings, with less cost in operations andfewer cables compared to a physical substation. Or reliability and resilience,which can reduce downtimes and instability on the line. Lower infrastructurecosts might open the market for ne