Get the Most Out of Your Energy Investments While Supporting a Cleaner Future

By Bryan Friehauf, Senior Vice President, Enterprise Software Solutions, Hitachi Energy; and
Phil Gruber, General Manager, Energy/Utility Industry Practice, Hitachi Vantara

Today’s utilities are transforming operations to support a more diverse mix of assets and to enable smarter, faster decision-making and environmental responsibility. For example, many utilities are employing high-speed communications, along with smart devices that generate near-real-time data from every part of their organizations. Energy companies are acquiring unprecedented volumes of data from IoT sensors and drones that inspect facilities, monitor equipment for changes in temperature and conditions, and perform countless other tasks.
This data can help them understand the current state of their energy sources to forecast demand, optimize distribution and improve efficiency — all of which contribute to the greater sustainability many consumers desire. But making sense of that data can be a challenge without the right technology and strategic advisors to provide guidance.

Industries like energy and utilities grapple with challenges such as aging infrastructure, asset lifecycle management, regulatory compliance, high repair and maintenance costs, cybersecurity risks, stagnating budgets, and most importantly, integrating renewables into already complex energy systems. To reach today's ambitious sustainability goals, energy companies will need the help of top technology leaders who can provide a data-driven approach to these challenges.

With its net-zero carbon emissions initiative, Ameren aims to retire its last baseload coal plant in 2042. By 2050, it will be essentially carbon-free. It plans to invest in electric and communications grids to offer customers access to affordable, sustainable products and services, from solar panels to electric-vehicle support. The company wanted a partner that shared its environmental philosophy and had the experience to provide advanced technologies and guidance. Hitachi had all of these attributes, plus a dedication to social innovation and powering good.

Ameren uses solutions from Hitachi Energy and Hitachi Vantara, including Hitachi’s Lumada solutions, to support its strategy. The two companies provide digital technologies and consulting services that enable:

• Digital transformation and data modernization, advising and supporting organizations on their digital transformation journey and enabling better access to insights from data.
• Health, safety and environmental solutions to help ensure safe practices for workers and a safe environment for the public.
• Intelligent operations management that helps organizations gain efficiencies and reduce their carbon footprint.
• Connected asset performance to help energy organizations predict and prevent failures and optimize maintenance strategies.

Ameren uses solutions from Hitachi to support and manage a complex mix of renewable energy providers, prosumers, traditional generation assets and more. For example, Hitachi’s Lumada Asset Performance Management (APM) solution lets Ameren monitor its critical equipment and support condition-based asset management. Lumada APM software is designed to connect to multiple organizationally disparate data sources and use advanced data analytics to provide predictive and prognostic insights for asset risk management. It helps hundreds of customers across the globe every day as they manage more than $4 trillion in assets. It helps Ameren base decisions to “maintain, repair or replace” on actual asset conditions — and their criticality to operations. Monitoring asset health enables Ameren to determine repair and replace priorities, mitigate risks before they affect customers, and minimize wasteful, expensive unplanned outages — as well as associated truck rolls and their associated emissions.

Energy organizations must contend with rapidly shifting market uncertainties, such as changing economies that affect energy loads and scales. Costly decarbonization initiatives and evolving asset portfolios are also in the mix as they migrate facilities to more sustainable energy sources. By combining Hitachi software solutions with sustainable energy storage provided by Hitachi Energy, energy companies can meet the growing demand for connected asset performance and proactive forecast for better maintenance and investment planning. Hitachi helps organizations unlock deep visibility into the state of their assets — and share those insights with the community and potential business partners.

In a dynamic environment, utilities must perform analysis at a much more granular level than in the past. For example, the challenges that Ameren faces on the distribution grid are much more local than those of a transmission grid. With Lumada APM, the company can publish heat maps on its website, showing optimal locations for distributing resources and making that information available to developers and customers.

Ameren’s initiative reflects a fundamental transformation of the distribution grid, driven by an increasing diversity and the emergence of distributed generation sources. It also demonstrates Hitachi’s commitment to "powering good", innovating to accelerate the energy transition toward a carbon-neutral future. Hitachi is leading by example, seeking to achieve carbon-neutrality in its own operations by 2030. By partnering with Hitachi to enhance visibility, develop intelligent insights and support more sustainable production, Ameren is poised to increase the reliability and availability of its services while also driving down costs.

To learn more about how Hitachi is empowering local communities to extend positive environmental impacts worldwide, visit https://www.hitachienergy.com/.