Have you wanted to achieve something but haven’t really known where to start? Well, that’s me, right now, as I write this blog post. This is the first time I’ve written a post and after doing a fair bit of research and pulling together as much info as I can get in the finite amount of time I’ve given myself, I’m giving it a go.

My challenge isn’t new, in fact, it’s no different to a lot of challenges people I’ve been speaking to recently are facing with respect to their Net Zero ambitions, priorities, and potential projects. There’s so much that needs to be done, within a limited budget, and a clock that seems to be ticking much faster than it did a few years ago. Where does one even start?

For a lot of organisations, the first thing to do is look inward. How many buildings do I have in my portfolio? What sort of buildings are they? Which ones are the worst energy offenders? Not everyone has a complete picture or a 360 view of their portfolio.

There is so much data out there, some free, some not, some high quality, some not. All of it out there, somewhere, to help people and organisations get to Net Zero. The challenge is knowing where to find it, how to access it, and getting the most out of it in a way that doesn’t break the bank or result in lengthy timescales.

Speaking to the people responsible for identifying their organisation’s portfolio  or their clients’ portfolio and determining where to start first, whether it’s locations for potential solutions or potential locations for innovative low carbon technology, they’d all say that if they could wave a magic wand, they’d just want a list of all the locations and properties prioritised by where they should start first from a retrofit and low carbon tech perspective. Simple, right?

In 2022, a data center in Houston came to Gridmatic with an ambitious ask: they wanted to begin matching their energy consumption with zero-emission power sources on an hourly basis, in a fashion similar to the 24/7 clean energy goal announced in 2020 by Google.

And so over the course of the next year, the energy modeling company did just that. They used artificial intelligence to forecast the data center’s energy needs and the availability of clean energy to identify ideal sources of energy and avoid the over-buying that is typically associated with time-matching energy strategies. By the end of the year-long pilot project, the data center was successfully matching 80% of its power consumption with zero-carbon energy sources on an hourly basis, said David Miller, vice president of business development for Gridmatic.

The pilot was even more successful than anyone the team had hoped: the initial goal was to match about 60% of the data center’s hourly energy needs with clean energy resources, Miller said. But they did not ultimately find affordable resources to match all of the data center’s energy needs.

In the remote Barkly region of Australia’s Northern Territory, about halfway between Alice Springs and Darwin, sits the small First Nations outstation of Marlinja. Home to roughly 60 people, the outback community recently celebrated the launch of what it says is the first First Nations-owned grid-connected solar microgrid in Australia.

The microgrid includes a 100 kW solar array and a 136 kWh battery and took five years to complete as community members and Original Power, the non-profit developer for the project, navigated the design, fundraising, installation and commissioning process.

Home to Uluru, formerly known as Ayers Rock, Australia’s Northern Territory has a rich indigenous culture. But beyond the tourist areas, remote First Nations communities in the region are plagued by energy insecurity and high energy prices.

For many, electricity is provided via pre-paid meters. Like pay-as-you-go mobile phone plans, the consumer purchases the amount of electricity they expect to need for a given period of time. Once the credit runs out, the meter shuts off power to the home. 

If you think you know consumer behavior, think again. Middle-income consumers are feeling the squeeze and worrying about inflation but aren’t holding back on splurges. Rather than sticking to tight budgets in retirement, aging consumers are splurging too. Speaking of older shoppers, it turns out that the brand loyalty they’ve long been known for is a thing of the past. And young consumers in Asia and the Middle East are more likely than those in Western markets to switch to higher-priced brands.

These are just some of the large-scale shifts taking place in the global consumer landscape. Consumers have continued to defy expectations and behave in atypical ways, keeping consumer goods manufacturers and retailers on their toes. More than ever, companies that cultivate a detailed, up-to-date understanding of today’s and tomorrow’s consumers—who they are, what they want, and where and how they shop—will be best positioned to succeed.

In this article, we draw on our ConsumerWise research to delve into nine trends shaping the global consumer sector and four imperatives to help consumer businesses move from “now” to “next.”

Commercial, industrial and mission-critical industries all face the pressure of keeping the lights on in the face of an aging electric grid.

According to the White House, 70% of the nation’s transmission lines are more than 25 years old, and nearly 75% of all power outages are caused by weather-related events, such as snowstorms, hurricanes, tornadoes and wildfires.

Factor in the rising rate of electrification initiatives in the U.S., and companies are placed in an increasingly vulnerable position. They are looking to microgrids for on-site power resiliency, and those microgrids need to be tested and validated because of the incorporation of multiple generation resources and interconnection.

While most companies can’t directly impact grid resiliency, many are learning to support their own energy security by installing microgrids.

Microgrids are self-sufficient energy systems that provide electricity, heat and/or cooling to a discrete geographic footprint, such as a college campus, hospital complex, data center or manufacturing facility.

Microgrids can include multiple energy technologies, such as solar panels, wind turbines, combined heat and power, generators and fuel cells to produce their own power. Oftentimes, these systems also contain an energy storage system to store excess power for later use during a power emergency, such as a grid failure.

Twelve remote villages in the Suriname forest now have access to uninterrupted power thanks to a new microgrid. The microgrid is the first to be handed over as part of the second phase of the Suriname Village Microgrid Photovoltaic Project.  

Suriname is a small and ethnically diverse country located on the Atlantic coast of South America, just north of Brazil. It is one of the top global producers of bauxite, a sedimentary rock that is the world’s primary source of aluminum.

While much of the country’s population has access to reliable electricity, thousands living in the country’s remote forest region, far from Suriname’s electric infrastructure, have power for just a few hours each day.

The Suriname Village Microgrid Photovoltaic Project aims to solve that problem by providing these villages with continuous power 24 hours a day.

Ubicada en el corazón de Noruega, Trondheim ha emergido como un modelo a seguir en la revolución digital global, destacándose como un Territorio Inteligente de vanguardia. Esta ciudad, históricamente conocida por sus paisajes escandinavos y su rica herencia vikinga, se ha reinventado con una visión futurista que combina tecnología avanzada y sostenibilidad.

Trondheim, fundada en el año 997, ha sido un núcleo vital en la historia de Noruega. Desde ser la residencia de los reyes vikingos hasta convertirse en un centro de peregrinación medieval, su transformación a lo largo de los siglos ha sido notable. Sin embargo, fue a principios del siglo XXI cuando la ciudad comenzó a abrazar la revolución digital de manera integral. Inspirada en la creciente demanda global por ciudades más inteligentes y eficientes, Trondheim adoptó un enfoque multifacético para transformarse en un Territorio Inteligente.

Uno de los pioneros en estudiar las ciudades inteligentes, Boyd Cohen, describe a Trondheim como un ejemplo sobresaliente de cómo una ciudad puede integrarse al siglo XXI sin perder su esencia histórica. La combinación de infraestructura tecnológica y políticas públicas innovadoras ha sido fundamental para este cambio.

The grant funding will accelerate California’s progress toward the state’s 100% renewable energy goal and help address severe resource adequacy constraints.

The initiative will play a key role in proving the importance of multi-DER control and optimization. Because EVs, thermostats, and batteries have different demand characteristics, enrolling two or more kinds of DERs in a VPP enables improved load-shaping capabilities. This will help deliver a reliable, increasingly decarbonized grid in California, and accelerate the CEC’s progress toward 100% renewable power in the state. Additionally, the grant expands the opportunity for California residents to enroll connected devices in VPPs, even if their utility does not offer such programs. 

The $1.5 million program, which began June 6th, will enroll up to 7,000 new thermostats, EVs, EV chargers, and batteries with a focus on low- and moderate-income customers. Device owners can either participate via their electric utility, if a program is offered, or enroll directly with EnergyHub if a utility program is unavailable. EnergyHub’s distributed energy resource management system (DERMS) will be used to aggregate enrolled devices into VPPs, which can then be bid into the CAISO market through EnergyHub’s partnership with Leap.

“This grant makes it possible for more Californians to realize the full benefits of DERs, expanding access to participation in VPPs” said Angela Kent, Manager, Regulatory Affairs, at EnergyHub. “By enabling multi-DER control and optimization, EnergyHub will help accelerate California’s achievement of its climate goals while improving grid reliability and sharing the financial benefits with electricity consumers.”

Flexibility is the ability of a power system to adapt its consumption or production to fluctuating electricity demand, whether expected or unexpected. Flexibility benefits from data spaces by requiring high-level of data/information integration among stakeholders, which will be highly accelerated through a common ecosystem easing the burden of many managerial, bureaucratic, and technological aspects of the data exchange.

Examples of exchanged data include electrical energy consumption and production of network nodes and environmental data from weather stations.

Examples of data turned into information by advanced analytics and predictive services include energy consumption/production profiles and information on how to remotely activate and deactivate consumption and production of specific resources.