BRIDGE Energy Group announced the results from their 2017 BRIDGE Index Utility Industry Survey on Grid Modernization. This marks the third year BRIDGE has surveyed utilities specifically on grid-modernization efforts, the progress made and the challenges they face.
This year’s survey, reaching over 20,000 utility employees throughout North America, reveals an 11% increase over 2016 survey results, of utility companies developing a grid-modernization plan — with 91% of the respondents indicating they clearly understand the associated benefits and targeted outcomes.
This year’s survey reveals an 11% increase over 2016 results.
“Grid Modernization is now mainstream and an active part of utility strategy driving a broad spectrum of changes in regulatory policy and the utility business model, and requiring investments in new real-time technologies and infrastructure,” said Mike Bianco, VP, Grid Operations Practice at BRIDGE.
“We are encouraged to see that a clear mapping of utility strategic goals to required capabilities and enabling technologies, using tools such as the BRIDGE Line-of-Sight methodology, is providing clear value in stakeholder alignment and investment planning,” he added.
The 2017 BRIDGE Index Utility Industry Survey on Grid Modernization also reveals:
- 84 % of responding utilities are exploring new business models.
- Utilities’ top priority for grid modernization is maintaining or improving reliability.
- The #1 concern in delivering grid modernization initiatives is the integration of related systems and technologies.
- 97 % of survey respondents expect an increase in grid analytics from and for their grid modernization plans.
“Within the utility industry, the IoT concepts find their way into distribution operations and information technology (IT) organizations through seemingly benign business requests,” Pratt stated. “The reality is that these requests should require departments to contemplate more about the future of their enterprise architecture, rather than a heavy focus on present-day issues.”
Complete Grid Modernization survey results can be found here.
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