March 2023
Featured in this insight: Electricity, Gas, International
Energy Security found to be 'most exciting' area of smart utility development: A survey of senior professionals at utilities companies in the U.S. has revealed that energy security was found to be the 'most exciting' area of smart utility developments in the next 12 months. It ranked top with almost eight in ten respondents citing it as the most exciting area (79%), followed by the 'development of smart buildings and infrastructure (75%) and weather and climate management systems (73%).
In addition, around seven in ten respondents of the 250+ senior decision makers working in IT, Operations and Production at US utilities said that the development of 'disaster management systems' was most exciting (69%).
The survey which was conducted in January 2023 by Wi-SUN Alliance (a global association of industry leading companies driving the adoption of interoperable wireless solutions for use in smart utilities and smart cities), sought to find out more about the changes experienced within the utility industry over the last 12 months as well as the most exciting smart/IoT tech developments.
When asked about security for smart utility networks and the need for 'proven security and reliability' 83% acknowledged that this was 'very important'.
When asked what will be the greatest focus for utilities when it comes to smart grid deployments in the next 6–11months, almost three-quarters (74%) said ‘electric vehicle charging’, with ‘outage management’, ‘advance metering infrastructure’ (AMI) and ‘distributing energy sources’ (DER) also a priority for seven in 10 respondents (71%).
When asked about what is important to drive development and innovation in the sector, three-quarters of respondents (75%) said 'more pilot projects and implementations', followed by ‘greater co-operation between private and public sectors’ (72%) and ‘government funding/legislation’ (70%).
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