As all major industry verticals, the energy and utilities industry is facing a drastic change with the coming of industrial 4.0. This change is closely related to the Internet of Things (IoT) devices’ deployment and the holistic approach that the Internet of Everything (IoE) covers within this exponentially growing digitalization. Significant benefits that drive this change include cost savings, sustainable applications, and time reduction in management.
To adopt a decentralized IoE in the energy and utilities industry, companies have to introduce this digitalization to their critical infrastructure needs. Some crucial devices are smart metering, sensor-based monitoring, and pairing different IoT utilities’ sensors. Implementing these brings usage analytics to building entirely new business models that can create huge benefits translated to cost-efficiency, improvement in safety measures, predictive and preventive maintenance, tailored pricing models, more transparency and visibility, sustainability innovations, etc.
Integrating IoT in the energy and utilities industry is a holistic approach that services opportunities to the whole supply chain:
· Energy
· Generation and distribution networks
· Water
· Gas
· Electricity companies
· Waste and recycle operation managers
All the above are huge achievable benefits through a truly decentralized digital architecture. Although currently, the major solutions available for the industry 4.0 deployment are centralized-based. Having centralized solutions to adopt an Internet of Everything to deploy the IoT devices deployment installs specific issues that can decelerate the transition. The major problems that arise come through security and privacy assurance and real-time data to information on a 24/7 basis.
To map out the benefits that decentralized IoE brings to the energy and utilities industry, we present in more detail the sectors mentioned above. These can achieve with a decentralized IoE present and future needs in a scalable, secure, sustainable, and efficient way. Providing businesses with the assurance of data to information through a knowledge-based AI and real-time information inputs.
This is possible because it enables devices to contribute computing resources over an intelligent mesh network so that computing can happen where it is needed and close to where it will be used. Thus, eliminating the necessity of moving the data to server centers to be stored, analyzed, and sent back to the origin. Consequently, as there are no central points to takeout, cyberattacks are practically impossible to be successful.
One of the most obvious advantages of upgrading energy and utility infrastructures and operations is cost-efficiency, which translates into long-term savings. In this sense, the benefits of using a decentralized IoE for IoT deployments are manifold. We present several examples of energy and utilities assets and infrastructure:
· Sensor-based monitoring: Helps optimize maintenance and prevent costly breakdown and downtime.
· IoT technology’s automation: Ignites into production, distribution, and supply operations, helping reduce labor costs.
· Pairing different IoT energy and utilities sensors: This implementation added to advanced analytics allows identifying resource waste and inefficiencies with high precision and mitigates them in advance.
Safety is one of the major benefits that decentralized IoE orchestration offers, increasing the safety of staff and customers. Deployed through IoT devices, such as smart grid practices, condition monitoring, and proactive equipment maintenance; this results in avoiding accidents and reducing risks associated with energy and utilities operations.
The implementation is also available at a lower scale with standard smart meters helping households measure electricity, water, and gas consumption—providing the energy and utilities industry with valuable data to information on load, peaks, and abnormalities allows to identify potential dangers like outages, breakouts, and leaks.
IoE activates a predictive and preventive approach by combining real-time and historical data with knowledge-based AI data processing. This process creates a valuable insight into how things work today and in the future.
Gathering data and analyzing to produce data to information through an AI, gives the knowledge to identify patterns and curves. Results in a source to predict and prevent and apply in assets, production, and performance in a given time period. Professionals in the industry can use this information to:
· Electricity producer and distributor — An instrument to predict consumption and optimize production across distributed energy resources.
· Infrastructure managers:Use these insights to prevent downtime or major failures due to the natural wear and tear of the equipment.
Activating IoT devices to monitor the consumption of individual household appliances and businesses machinery provides accurate on-demand consumption. As such, it helps to offer incentives, decrease the carbon footprint, evenly distribute electricity demand, prevent overloads, and maximize the share of renewables.
Having this service implemented within a decentralized IoE assures real-time data to information on a 24/7 basis. A benefit that opens possibilities to make tailored pricing more precise, leaving behind charges based on common trends, giving utility companies a dynamic response. Thus, adjusting to changing household habits and providing better:
· Adequate pricing policies.
· Loyalty.
· Prepay programs.
· Self-service features.
The ease of use that a decentralized IoE orchestration provides to implement IoT devices into grid operations offers transparency and visibility for producers, suppliers, and consumers. For example, managers can monitor grids in real-time via dashboards and control panels, helping to actuate daily and build data for information-driven strategies at scale.
IoT apps for utility providers and households are essential tools for the downstream sector. Using web and mobile applications:
· Utility companies: Can monitor demand and load, remotely controlling supply and pricing.
· Customers: Can control their consumption and spending using an IoT-based utility app or platform, adjusting their usage to curated needs:
1. Cut down on bill payments.
2. Opt for greener habits.
3. Switch to energy-efficient appliances.
Given the exponential growth of the usage of greener energy sources and technology adoption to action it. The logical path for energy and utility companies is to invest in renewable energy and industry 4.0 digitalization.
The tendency that drives this cleaner and more efficient energy source is interconnected with a digital transformation. Therefore, this niche is adopting IoT-based tech, requiring sensor-data analytics and management for, among others:
· Energy storage.
· Energy analysis and modeling.
· Microgeneration.
· Renewable energy production and distribution.
· Distributed energy management.
The renewable energy market is a reality, forcing energy and utility companies to transform their processes if they want to keep their place in the market. A fact that can be actioned and accelerated with a decentralized IoE architecture, giving businesses in the energy and utilities industry a holistic approach to managing their energy transformation.
A combination with other data sources, e.g., global weather trends, geological activity reports, and solar production forecasts, smoothens the transformation for companies. They can build strategies with foresight and calculate risks with higher precision than ever before.
It is possible that many don’t know what the Internet of Everything is; this is a common trend because IoE is a pretty new concept. The Internet of Everything is the upper layer that will eventually orchestrate the IoT devices' deployment globally. In contrast, the Internet of Things is specific to the connection of physical devices, sensors, appliances, machines, etc., to the internet. The Internet of Everything acts upon a broader range of factors that fall into four fundamental pillars:
1. People — As there is higher adoption of wearables by people, this growth in the near future, data produced by people will come from their homes, vehicles, leisure resorts, waste, and much more. An injection of data that IoE, with the power of, e.g., AI algorithms, will be able to analyze and thus, “understand” human issues.
2. Data — The vast amount of raw data IoT devices will bring to global deployment cries for an analysis process. With IoE, it is possible to summarize, classify, and analyze Big Data to turn it into priceless information.
3. Processes — Ensuring that the correct information reaches the right person or machine at the right time. In essence, the goal of IoE processing is to guarantee the best possible usage of Big Data.
4. Things — IoE gives IoT another access point to output and input data on their real-time status and send it to the needed destination across the network. An autonomous approach that wasn't possible before the orchestration of the Internet of Everything wasn’t possible, resulting in a more dynamic data flow.
The Internet of Everything is the intelligent connectivity between physical devices, people, processes, and data.
The possibilities that the Internet of Everything offers to the energy and utilities industry are far and wide. Orchestrating the IoT devices deployment via a decentralized IoE architecture, it assures a digital implementation safe from cybercriminals and cyberterrorists and real-time data to information on a 24/7 basis.
At the Internet of Everything Corp, we have created a decentralized, autonomous, portable, secure, virtual infrastructure for managing clustered workloads over depos (decentralized pods) and services that facilitate both declarative configuration and automation — Eden System.
IoE Eden System came into existence due to our insight into the development of digitalization and the coming of a globally connected world. When we looked at this development, we noticed one limiting factor for the future: you always need to move the data to a centralized point. A solution that works great for inherently centralized web services, but for future massive IoT or mobile App solutions, it does not make that much sense.
To move data from a load of devices to a central point and then move the data back out to the devices again is the core reason for the major vulnerabilities current solutions are showing. Therefore, our Eden System is based on a decentralized model based on scalable device clustering, where it is easy to add new devices as nodes—making it possible for any device to contribute computing resources over an intelligent mesh network so that computing can happen where it is needed and close to where it will be used.
We then developed quantum-safe tunnels using polymorphic encryption keys and a consensus blockchain to verify the data moved between the nodes over the tunnels, thus creating trusted data walled gardens.
The orchestration of computing and storage is done via service manifests that describe services:
· Rules
· Policies
· Logistic
An autonomous knowledge-based AI manages the underlying orchestration mechanics using network consensus over the blockchain as a deciding mechanism. The orchestration dynamically updates the cluster topography to fit the current workload. Eden System depos are generated and deployed similarly to container images; the depos are MPI cluster enabled from the start.
In this sense, IoE Corp’s Eden System offers agile service creation and deployment because the only addition to a typical container deployment is the Service Manifest generation. Continuous development, integration, and deployment provides for reliable and frequent depo build and deployment with quick and efficient rollbacks (due to depos immutability).
We also offer automatic scaling. You provide IoE Eden with the size of the starting cluster of nodes that it can or should use to run service tasks. Then, Eden System will optimize how much CPU and memory (RAM) each task needs. Another advantage of the Eden System is that it can be installed onto your nodes to make the best use of your resources.
If you are interested in acquiring our groundbreaking decentralized IoE Eden System technology for your energy and utility business. You can contact our expert team for more details on the implementation process and what specialized services are critical for your energy and utility business's growth.
Be part of the change and become a leader in your industry, keeping one step ahead of the crowd with our breakthrough technological innovation. An application ready for your current and future necessities.
