Siemens anticipates that orders for Smart Grid technologies will reach nearly €1 billion in the current fiscal year. “The Smart Grid market will see increasingly dynamic growth fueled by climate change and economic stimulus programs. We want to grow twice as fast as the overall market,” added Dehen. The market being addressed by Siemens totals around €30 billion over the coming five years. Siemens is aiming at seven percent annual growth and a market share of over 20 percent in the Smart Grid business.
“The world needs intelligent power grids in order to meet the growing demand for energy in a way that is eco-friendly and reliable. We estimate that the demand for electricity will double by 2030, due to trends like e-mobility, which is just emerging,” continued Dehen. According to studies, more than a billion tons of CO2 emissions could be abated with intelligent power networks by 2020. Smart Grids are essential for integrating renewable power sources into power networks and for ensuring stable power supplies from solar and wind energy.
Overall, the Smart Grid market has three primary components: Smart Metering (intelligent billing), Grid Intelligence (the grid infrastructure and its controls), and Utility IT (intelligent data management). Siemens is active in all three areas and is already global market leader for grid intelligence. Siemens will strengthen its Smart Grid portfolio in the field of power data management in the coming fiscal year when it plans to take over a 60-percent stake in Energy4U on October 1, 2009. This move will expand the company’s portfolio for power utilities in the area of consumption data acquisition and billing.
Smart Grids have enormous growth potential worldwide. They are, for example, a prerequisite for reaching the EU’s 20-20-20 climate goals aimed at reducing CO2 emissions by 20 percent and increasing the share of renewable energies in the European grid by 20 percent by 2020. In addition, Smart Grids are included in many of the economic stimulus programs throughout the world.
The U.S. government alone intends to invest around €3 billion here in the coming years. Siemens expects to receive orders worth around €15 billion from these programs by 2012. Forty percent of these orders, or a volume of roughly €6 billion, is expected to be for green technologies from the Siemens Environmental Portfolio.
Energy-efficient, resource-conserving Smart Grids are part of the Siemens Environmental Portfolio, which generated revenue of nearly €19 billion in fiscal 2008. This was around one-quarter of the company’s total revenue, making Siemens the world’s biggest infrastructure provider of environmental technologies.
Paving the way to a smart grid: Siemens and eMeter to implement innovative meter management system at U.S. utility Burbank Water and Power
The Californian utility Burbank Water and Power based in Burbank intends to convert its power supply network into a smart grid. To achieve this it has contracted Siemens Energy to implement a meter data management system. The system provided by Siemens and its smart metering partner eMeter, which is headquartered in San Mateo, California, is based on the meter data management software Energy IP. This software supports current and future smart metering-applications and business processes on the basis of the advanced metering infrastructure AMI. The solution will not only enhance customer services through shorter and more precise billing intervals but also improve information, workflow and peak load management.
Energy IP will also support load control programs at Burbank Water and Power, with the software enhancing energy management and thus resulting in energy savings. The system achieves this through timely delivery of interval data thanks to automatic meter reads. Load control decisions are taken based on this data and checked to establish whether consumption has thus changed. “With our customized smart metering solution we will support Burbank in the setting up of a smart grid foundation. Today, we are the sole global provider with project experience in all fields relating to smart grids,” said Ralf Christian, CEO of the Power Distribution Division within Siemens Energy.
Energy IP’s strengths encompass its open software architecture and scalability, and its comprehensive data management functions. That includes the acquisition and management of meter data and the conditioning of this data for billing and metering management. The software also features an integration platform, with which the digital telemeters of various manufacturers can be linked to the information systems of the utilities. Energy IP can thus be deployed for the processing of meter data in smart grid projects.
In early 2008, Siemens Energy and eMeter concluded a partnership in the field of smart metering with the aim of jointly marketing the Energy IP meter data processing software worldwide. Siemens is utilizing its global competence in smart grid solutions and its all-round systems and project expertise in the field of smart metering.
The Siemens Energy Sector is the world’s leading supplier of a complete spectrum of products, services and solutions for the generation, transmission and distribution of power and for the extraction, conversion and transport of oil and gas. In fiscal 2008 (ended September 30), the Energy Sector had revenues of approximately EUR22.6 billion and received new orders totaling approximately EUR33.4 billion and posted a profit of EUR1.4 billion. On September 30, 2008, the Energy Sector had a work force of approximately 83,500. Further information is available at: www.siemens.com/energy.
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