EnergyBiz - September/October 2007 - (Page 84) WhaT are The Top Three challengeS Facing iT DeparTMenTS ThiS year anD neXT? Difficulty in recruiting new staff Lack of corporate executive support 22% 22% Other 26% Aging/retirement of IT staff Inability to keep up with rapid technological evolution Cost constraints preventing much improvement Better integration/ architecture 30% 44% 56% 74 % Source: Sierra Energy Group, a division of Energy Central understanding the technology. Many utilities still haven’t dealt with the silo mentality. Time is running out, however, and unless utility leadership grasps the big picture of what they have, how it operates, its limitations and strengths, and its needs, they will be unable to meet the increasing demands. Demand response — programs to cut demand through advanced metering and in-home networks — will help some, but can substitute for only a fraction of future needs. Green energy systems will help, but that will be slow. Only 2.3 percent of U.S. energy currently is supplied by such systems. Increased generation, possibly even new nuclear plants, will help, but they can’t be built fast enough or in enough places to meet that demand bubble. With the current political, regulatory and legislative environment, it is extremely unlikely that enough generation or transmission will be built to meet anticipated increase in demand by 2030. The only place left to look is toward more efficiency and more productivity from what we already have. That means more, faster, better-integrated technology. When other top executives reach that conclusion, they turn to the CIO. Integrating existing systems is a critical first step before CIOs can move on to the next steps to help their utilities solve their problems. This includes deploying automated, self-healing, self-operating smart grids and coupling them with intelligent enterprises that provide rapid, comprehensive analytical and decision-support mechanisms to the boardroom. This is the only way utilities can hope to meet the demands likely to be placed on them over the next 20 years. While CIOs are likely to be in the forefront of deploying new smart systems, they also still have to fight rear-guard action against the traditional silos of technology that developed over the last 30 years. A senior operations engineer at a major utility recently said at an industry conference, “IT doesn’t understand SCADA and DA.” SCADA, supervisory control and data acquisition, and DA, distribution automation, are the primary information systems traditionally involved in operating the grid. While most CIOs would disagree with the operations engineer’s observation — SCADA and DA are not rocket science — whether they understand the arcane intricacies of these systems is irrelevant to the overall operation of the utility and meeting the demands of the future. The intelligent enterprise must receive data from SCADA and DA — preferably next-generation, self-healing, self-reporting SCADA and DA systems — and convert that data into information necessary to run the utility. CIOs will be at the top of that information chain helping make critical decisions on investment and response to the host of issues utilities face. But CIOs must have the critical information about the day-to-day operation of the grid — something that has been held in the operations silos in the past. Attitudes such as those espoused by the operations engineer die hard, however, and are just another one of the tangled web of issues CIOs face. As most of them will attest, the cultural and change-management aspects of their jobs usually are far more challenging than gatherings www.energycentral.com/events T E C H N O L O GY F R O N T I E R To view any of these events, please go to www.energycentral.com/ ) into the quick link box. quicklink and type the quick link code ( OCTOBER 1-5 Circuit Breaker Test & Maintenance | 2-3 | Gas Business Understanding 8-11 Distribution Apparatus Conference | 9-10 Gas and Electric Business | 9-11 British Wind Energy | 15-16 Global Power Markets | 29-31 CMI Americas | Pittsburgh Houston Pine Mountain, Ga. Los Angeles Glasgow, United Kingdom Schenectady, N.Y. New York E16343 E16122 E17050 E16124 E16318 E16921 E16984 NOVEMBER 5-7 Utilities Field Service Dallas Houston | 5-9 | Power Electronics in Transmission, Wind Power 7-9 | Grid Interop Forum 26-28 Wind Power Fundamentals | Albuquerque, N.M. Schenectady, N.Y. www.energycentral.com E16936 E16695 E16960 E16928 E n E rgyB i z 85 http://www.energycentral.com/events http://www.energycentral.com/quicklink http://www.energycentral.com/quicklink http://www.energycentral.com
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