Читать книгу Business Trends in Practice - Бернард Марр, Bernard Marr - Страница 42

But it's not all rosy. One of the main challenges with decentralized energy is the lack of institutional knowledge and experience on how to develop and implement such projects, although organizations like the Carbon Trust and Urban Energy are helping to solve this.

Another challenge is how to cope with fluctuating demand patterns within these smaller grids (unlike, say, huge energy providers that can easily produce enough power at peak demand times). This is where technologies like AI can help (more on the digitization of energy coming up later). Using data from smart sensors, and smart energy storage solutions, decentralized systems can better manage local energy requirements and ensure power is supplied where and when needed. An example of this comes from Cornwall's Local Energy Market, which announced in 2019 that it had reached a “flexibility breakthrough” after installing a combination of solar, battery systems, and monitoring equipment into 100 homes and 125 businesses across Cornwall, England.¹⁶

Related to this is the term “Internet of Energy” (IoE). Like the Internet of Things (see Chapter 2), the IoE relies on smart devices to increase efficiencies and improve control. As an example, US-based startup Lumidyne Consulting's SPIDER system applies data modeling to distributed energy resources, to predict impact on energy demand and aid the planning of energy distribution. Or there's British startup Distributed Energy, which provides demand management solutions to manage small and mid-sized companies' power requirements, enabling greater adoption of renewable energy. Tools like this will help to manage risk and uncertainty in decentralized networks and make moving away from standard grids a viable option for more energy users.