Smart Grid technology has the potential to be the single-most disruptive innovation within the utility industry. The convergence of multiple technologies, standards and legislation has enabled Smart Grid to significantly impact the utility industry. However, the benefits of Smart Grid will not be fully achieved unless organizations look beyond just the technology changes and harness the potential value of Smart Grid within its business processes, organizational structure, and market-serving approach.

The scope of Smart Grid is more far-reaching than improved meter reading and billing, and has the potential to impact almost every process and organizational role within the utility. And the biggest impact of Smart Grid, unlike most other innovations that have impacted the utility industry, is that Smart Grid changes the way that the utility can serve its customers and stakeholders. The meter data combined with the Smart Grid communication infrastructure provides fundamental changes to the way a utility can interact and provide new services to its customers. This will require an enterprise-wide re-skilling of the utility from the call centre, to the back-office, to the field, to be much more analytically-based, armed with the Smart Grid data.

However, the deployment of Smart Grid also has the risk to adversely affect the relationship with the utility’s customers, cause friction with regulatory bodies and negatively impact the market value for the utility’s shareholders if it is not effectively implemented. The utility has to successfully manage the internal and external change in ways that utilities traditionally have not been challenged with, in order to achieve the full benefits of Smart Grid.

Therefore, a structured approach is required to analyse and define the changes to each process and each role within the organization to enable the achievement of the strategic goals and vision that the organization has established for Smart Grid.

The transition into a fully-engaged Smart Grid organization follows several stages:

• Preparation – During this stage, the organizational and process transformation needs to begin through extensive workshops and meetings with internal and external stakeholders that drive out the internal and customer-facing processes and organizational changes needed for Smart Grid. A solid foundation is essential.
• Pilot – The processes, technologies, systems, and overall assumptions defined and employed for Smart Grid will be validated in a controlled setting while working closely with the internal and external stakeholders on gaining their inputs and recommendations for the full deployment.
• Deployment – During this stage, the one-off deployment processes are used to deploy the technology as the organization transitions to a steady stage.
• Steady Stage – The ongoing Smart Grid processes and organizational changes, both internal and customer-facing are completely deployed.

A utility that can successfully navigate through these stages and manage the change to its processes, organizations, and technologies will achieve significant benefits for itself and provide a new paradigm for the relationship with its stakeholders.

The scope and extent of change within a utility due to a “game changer,” such as Smart Grid, has not yet been experienced by most utilities. A utility needs strong, experienced, and committed leadership to direct the changes to its processes and organization and “stay the course” as hurdles and unexpected happenings occur, in order to achieve the full vision of Smart Grid.

Article with thanks to KEMA.