At this year’s DISTRIBUTECH, two conflicting trends clearly emerged: the need for virtual power plants (VPPs) to help balance the grid and its flip side, how to secure the vast amount of devices and data that VPPs will load on to the grid. Fortunately, Intertrust Energy’s technology is purpose-built to solve these very issues.

The energy industry is doing its best to react to the demands from both its customers and government bodies. Many customers, both commercial and residential, are increasingly pushing for clean energy while governments and the private sector are looking to use clean energy as a linchpin to electrify large parts of our economy.

Crowdsourcing the wide variety of energy devices such as solar panels, batteries, EVs, etc. that are being installed at the grid edge and using them to help support the grid through VPPs is an attractive solution. The U.S. Government has made this explicit through a number of initiatives that subsidize the transition to clean energy, most notably the Inflation Reduction Act and more specifically, a Department of Energy (DOE) Loan Programs Office initiative to directly finance VPP projects . Recognizing that the importance of AI, a critical element for VPPs, the DOE has gone as far as appointing Helena Fu as Director of the Office of Critical and Emerging Technology who will be involved with AI and other new technologies that will benefit the energy industry.

On the other hand, electrical grids worldwide are now the direct target of sophisticated cybercriminals backed by nation states. Examples range from an attack on the Ukrainian grid in 2022 , attributed to Russia, to agencies from the U.S., UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand issuing a warning in January 2024 about the threat to electrical grids and other critical infrastructure posed by the Chinese-backed Volt Typhoon cybercriminal group .

Rising government pressure

The cyberthreats to our grid are not something that have suddenly appeared without warning. Over the last couple of decades, numerous U.S. Government and affiliated organizations ranging from the White House to the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) have issued a number of standards and directives that affect the energy ecosystem supporting the grid. With the rise of very persistent and sophisticated attacks, complying with these is now a top priority.

While many of these may only technically apply to the utility-owned assets, forward thinking energy companies should consider how they can extend their cybersecurity compliance regimes to VPPs and the assets they control. One of the foundational standards is the NERC Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) reliability standard . Aimed at bulk energy systems on the transmission grid, NERC sets a baseline for implementing cybersecurity protections for the grid assets that VPPs will interoperate with. It can also be useful when considering protections for VPPs and the distributed energy resources (DERs) they control.

But of course, NERC CIP is not the only pressure from the government that energy companies need to account for. The White House Executive Order on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity was issued in May 2021, right after the Colonial Pipeline cyber attack . Focused on critical infrastructure, the Executive Order mandated that, among other actions, that Federal agencies adopt Zero Trust Architecture . Heavily implied is that critical infrastructure operators would be wise to do the same thing.

Given the myriad of potential software vulnerabilities, system misconfigurations and good old fashioned compromised employees, adopting the Zero Trust maxim of “never trust always verify” is really best practice for any cybersecurity program. Since the majority of the DERs that VPPs interoperate with are outside of an energy company’s direct control, it should be considered mandatory. One barrier, however, is that many of the cybersecurity protocols currently in use to protect energy devices, whether they are attached to the grid or behind the meter, aren’t Zero Trust-compliant.

How Intertrust XPN can help

Intertrust’s Explicit Private Networking (XPN ) secure communications service is specifically designed to provide a Zero Trust compatible end-to-end environment to protect connected devices, whether they are sensors attached to a gas turbine generator or an EV charger in a garage. Using standards that have been used and proven on the Internet for some time now, XPN is a novel service that verifies the device before it transmits data and then persistently protects that data as it travels to the cloud. It does the same for any commands sent from the cloud to the device.

XPN is not a “rip and replace” solution which requires a company to trash their entire cybersecurity infrastructure. Rather, it can be thought of as an overlay that adds an additional layer of trust and protection for energy devices and their data. XPN has been integrated into the xPP VPP system from EIPGRID and Intertrust is working with other VPP providers and utilities on XPN-enabled services.

Of course standards are vital to the energy industry, and Intertrust, along with major energy companies, is a co-founder of the Trusted Energy Interoperability Alliance (TEIA) , which is developing comprehensive security and interoperability standards for the energy industry. Intertrust is working closely with TEIA to ensure that XPN will be TEIA-standard compliant.

For an in-depth demo of XPN, just fill out this form and we’ll be in touch!

Originally published at https://www.intertrust.com on March 12, 2024.

Discussing timely grid related topics at the BERC Energy Summit

A recent panel at the BERC Energy Summit tackled some crucial, if not sobering issues facing the grid today. Christopher Moris, ‘s Chief Grid Architect, set the tone for the discussion early, pointing out that the company has seen a 70% increase in energy demand. He added, “We haven’t seen anything like this since post World War Two.” Of course, in California as well as many other geographies, the pressure is on utilities to not only meet expected further growth in load while also increasing the amount of clean energy on the grid.

Mr. Moris and his fellow panelists were in agreement that much much of the load growth we’re seeing is resulting from EV adoption as well as a switch over from gas-powered heating and appliances. Karim Ibrik, EVP Commercial for the industrial energy storage company Rondo Energy , also suggested that increased loads from industrial customers are part of the mix.

On the flip side, Thomas Vadora, Founder & CTO of the grid software company , mentioned another issue, large scale curtailment of renewable energy. Beyond a massive build up of grid infrastructure, which Mr. Moris said PG&E couldn’t do and their customers couldn’t afford anyway, how can the energy industry meet the twin challenges of increased demand while also further decarbonizing the grid?

Not surprisingly, the panel’s answers largely depended on the solution their companies were providing. One area of agreement was that the current grid is overbuilt so that it could still be relied upon even in worst case scenarios. Mr. Vadora suggested that software could orchestrate the grid by dynamically turning generators on and off according to grid conditions monitored in real time. Mr. Moris also mentioned that PG&E was deploying a flexible service that would use signals to deliver up to four times the amount of energy.

Shaping the load on the grid came up as another approach. Arch Rao, Founder & CEO of touted the ability of his company’s smart electrical panels to manage home appliance use to control home load. Rondo’s Ibrik mentioned that large industrial loads could also be flexibly controlled.

As for what is needed in California to help the industry, the lack of real-time energy pricing was brought up as a barrier. Mr. Ibrik said real-time pricing would help customers manage their loads in a flexible manner that would benefit the grid.

Regarding virtual power plants and distributed energy resource management systems which are often brought up as flexible solutions, Mr. Rao suggested that the current amount of grid assets these applications could control limits their value. Mr. Moris seemed to disagree by saying that there is a trend where we will see an increase in 100 MWh batteries in the form of EVs sitting in garages. “It will change the calculus to where DERs (distributed energy resources) are in abundance,” said Mr. Moris.

Throughout the discussions, one thing was clear. The solutions that all of the panel’s participants brought up will depend on data exchanges with energy devices. Given the constant cyberattacks on the grid and other critical infrastructure, it’s essential that these exchanges are based on secure and trusted data and devices. Intertrust’s Explicit Private Networking (XPN) technology gives energy companies and their partners the zero trust architecture based approach needed to keep the data backbones of the digital energy future secure and reliable.

Originally published at https://www.intertrust.com on February 28, 2024.

Two hot things are happening in industrial AI adoption: contextualizing AI models and intelligence at the edge. While contextualizing got a recent boost via Retrieval-augmented generation (“RAG”) for large language models (“LLM”), progress in making efficient embedded edge devices has been brewing slowly in the hardware world for quite some time.

Now, we are at the point where both innovations intersect — the compute power of embedded platforms have expanded to have GPUs with dozens of tensor cores and more than 16 GB of memory to load large models. At the same time, LLMs are optimized and tuned to work on less powerful hardware with RAGs and embedding for domain-specific applications. It’s also important to note that many consumer devices are very AI-capable, and many of them, like the iPad, are actively used in the field.

When we hear about AI adoption, it’s mainly in the context of picking the suitable model, connecting it to the correct data, and hosting it on the right platform for optimal performance. However, scaling AI adoption within large industrial settings creates a lot of security risks. Can AI accidentally leak my data? Can AI be manipulated to carry on critical actions with escalated privileges? Can you let AI make all autonomous decisions, or do you need humans in the loop?

I think there are enough stories to say yes confidently. Last June, researchers were able to access personally identifiable information from Nvidia’s AI software. In August, another vulnerability exploited ChatGPT to expose similar private data. Beyond leaking data, large language models can inject false data or even execute code remotely .

We will most likely hear more reports as AI adoption grows in the industrial world. So, how do we address these risks and prepare for the future where AI is augmenting many industrial processes?

Let’s start with the “Human in the Loop” problem.

To facilitate artificial intelligence at the “edge” or make a production facility actionable, we must let AI make decisions or bubble up suggestions for human intelligence approval and execution. Many industrial processes are regulated and require responsible party sign-off. We anticipate that as regulation of AI tools will increase, so will the “Human in the Loop” problem become a more pressing security concern and a compliance requirement. Now, to protect communication between AI, humans, and critical software or equipment, we need the next level of protection, one that not only operates on the transport level (like TLS/SSL) but also operates on the application level, where you can encrypt and sign individual messages/commands to confirm the authenticity of each step in the decision making and leaves a corresponding trace in an audit system.

Let’s look into infrastructure where learned models are trained, augmented, and hosted. But there are even more stories about training data being publicly accessible on the internet, including highly sensitive data . How can one protect such sensitive data throughout the whole AI lifecycle?

Level One: Isolate the training process with virtualization; structured data should be governed with row and column-level access control, training should be done in virtualized environments like Kubernetes, and unstructured data should be mounted into the virtualized environment during model training launch, PII and other sensitive elements within the training dataset should be masked or hashed.

Level Two: RAGs, embeddings, and Vector Databases. Segment vector data into different stores with access control so each model deployment can access individual vector stores with unique credentials.

There are a wide range of AI solutions today, but most are consumer-grade and must be protected enough to be deployed in industrial settings. To take advantage of the new AI tech, enterprises need a team of in-house experts, external consultants, or software to help them safely manage such integrations. Considering the trajectory of LLMs and the lack of professionals in that domain, it makes it expensive to hire in-house AI experts or external consultants; having a self-service infrastructure for data governance, model deployment, and security would allow businesses to move forward with market trends controlling the risks and the budgets.

While industry is in the early stages of this process, we believe it is never too early to ensure your systems are AI-ready. Our Virtual Operations Center (VOX) is built on the principles outlined above. VOX integrates data from many sources through a governance layer that prevents data leakage. By employing advanced security measures like Explicit Private Networking (XPN) , VOX not only safeguards against data leakage but also ensures that each step in the AI decision-making process is authorized and traceable. Our secure communication SDK — XPN provides a ‘Human in the Loop’ solution and ensures regulated industrial processes. Together, VOX and XPN provide a secure, centralized platform across the AI lifecycle.

As we navigate the evolving landscape of AI in industrial operations, the importance of deploying AI securely is greater than ever. If you are considering making your systems AI-ready or have concerns about integrating AI into your existing infrastructure, please feel free to contact us.

Originally published at https://www.intertrust.com on January 18, 2024.

Your business is transforming fast. In a few years you may likely be relying purely on Internet of Things IoT and software platforms for the day to day activities of your energy plant. Data will flow left and right, flooding all your AI tools with enormous amounts of useful information and you have to be sure you can collect it safely, share it efficiently, and ensure it is fully authenticated. Furthermore, the IoT devices that collect your valuable digital data also need authentication and must integrate seamlessly with your digital infrastructure and industrial processes.

There are two main components in your digital infrastructure and you must consider how to manage their convergence in your business efficiently. The convergence of IT iInformation technology) and ICS (industrial control systems) in the energy sector brings numerous benefits but also comes with its challenges. I am going to give you a quick introduction on what to consider as you proceed in your digital transformation journey.

Connecting traditionally isolated ICS to IT networks can expose critical infrastructure to cyber threats. Air gapping is not the best solution and amalgamating disparate networks and devices is not either. You need to implement robust cybersecurity measures, including firewalls, intrusion detection systems, and regular security assessments. Techniques like network segmentation, unlike air gapping, isolate critical systems from the broader IT network without separating from it.

Many ICS components are old and not designed with modern cybersecurity in mind. So it’s probably a good time to consider investing in upgrading or replacing legacy systems with more secure and up-to-date technologies. This is not a one time thing, however, you need to implement security patches and updates regularly.

Integrating diverse and distributed control systems (DCS) and protocols can be complex, but adopting industry standards and protocols for better interoperability can help organize your infrastructure to fit the needs of the industry as a whole and can help you stay revenue resilient as you scale your infrastructure.

Managing and analyzing large volumes of real-time data from both IT and ICS sources can be overwhelming without the right interoperability approach and technology. Implementing data analytics and visualization tools, like Intertrust VOX, to orchestrate devices and data is a proven approach that also scales as you grow. . Cloud-based solutions for scalable data storage and processing in conjunction with platform tools can talk to all your devices and help meet your security challenges by ensuring all the data collected comes from reliable sources.

Authenticating your data will help you secure it and meet regulatory and compliance goals. Meeting regulatory requirements in both IT and control functions can be challenging, but by developing a comprehensive compliance strategy that addresses the specific needs of IT and ICS you can regularly audit your information and update compliance measures adequately.

When considering how to build your digital business foundation for the future, remember that the kernel of integrating ICS and IT systems is seamless secure interoperability. That is to say, all hardware and software must connect effectively, all systems must have the right level of security. and all your digital infrastructure components need to be compatible with each other or must have a solution that can act as a hub to adapt and communicate with all of them.

Originally published at https://www.intertrust.com on January 17, 2024.

This Intertrust leadership blog features Grammy Award-winning record producer Albhy Galuten, our Senior Fellow of Technology Initiatives. We discuss NFTs and what’s possible with today’s fast-evolving digital marketplaces What is the difference between Fungible and Non-fungible goods? .

Fungibility came about with trading. If I have a one-pound bag of rice, it is the same as your one-pound bag of rice. That is true for pork bellies, ounces of gold, dollar bills, or barrels of oil.

Once we invented the printing press, it entered the media. My printed version of the Gutenberg Bible in 1455 was the same as yours. My DVD of Pulp Fiction is the same as yours. They are fungible.

Why are NFTs getting such a bad rap? Are they dead?

Individual items that are unique are not fungible. My drivers license, car registration, marriage certificate, or home deed are not fungible. The digital representations of these certificates are Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs). My grandchildren will not remember a time when these certificates and proofs of ownership were not digital.

In 2013 or 2014, NFTs became very fashionable and began fetching unreasonably high prices for items of arguably minimal value. Many evolutions in business go through boom cycles when they first become popular. In 1634 the tulip market in the Dutch Republic, which had recently exploded, crashed.

What are the current problems with NFTs?

There was the 19 th century gold rush that blew up for a while. When these markets return to normal, they deflate but don’t disappear. There was the dot-com bubble and then crash at the beginning of the 21 st century. The internet did not go away and Amazon, though their stock lost more than 90% of its value, did not go out of business. The underlying ideas evolve and continue. This is true for NFTs.

Widespread Copyright Infringement

There are a number of problems with most NFTs and NFT marketplaces today.

Lack of interoperability

For most NFTs, the proof of purchase lives on a robust immutable ledger or blockchain. That is good. However, the asset — the digital artwork, the video, or the audio, is typically stored in the cloud in unprotected form. One only needs to look at the data on the public blockchain to find the address of the asset and they can download it for themselves and keep it. They can then sell the asset on a different marketplace.

Imagine if you could only use “Target Dollars” to buy goods at Target or when you sold your car you could only get “Ford Dollars” and couldn’t use them to buy a Chevy. Because NFTs began in the crypto world, it is often assumed that you have to buy NFTs with crypto. Some marketplaces allow you to buy goods using credit cards and fiat currencies but typically they convert them to one form or another of crypto and charge heavy conversion fees.

Limited flexibility in business modeling and contractual arrangements

There was a time when copy-protected media like movies and recordings weren’t interoperable. Every platform had its own DRM. Then services began using the Common Encryption Scheme (CENC) and now you can watch your movie or listen to your music seamlessly on Sony TVs, Android phones and Apple laptops. The same thing needs to happen on NFT marketplaces.

Minimal integration with physical product

ERC contract standards are fantastic but they are limited. In the real world, there are many kinds of contractual arrangements. Smart contracts should be able to represent and enforce any sort of executable arrangement from paying people fractions of revenue streams only when they meet certain criteria to limiting the viewing of media by time of day, resolution, and/or territory. The nuts and bolts are there in the ERC standards, but we are a long way from being able to build an airplane.

As mentioned, NFCs are basically proofs of purchase. These receipts can be bound not only to digital products but also to physical products. This can be done using QR codes, but they are easy to copy and not secure. Some companies are using NFC (Near Field Communication) tags — the same technology used for Contactless Payment from your phone or credit card. These chips can be very flexible, cheap, and robust.

For example, they can be used in clothing where they retain functionality after 100 washings, in whiskey bottles where they signal the network if the bottle has been opened, in running shoes where they withstand the impact of 100s of thousands of steps and in train tickets where they are so inexpensive and flexible, they are printed into the paper.

Poor user experience for average users

This technology when combined with NFTs can add provenance, robustness, and accountability to all manner of physical goods and be used to track them and apply new business models to the resale market. I can buy a used Gucci bag and know not only that it is a real Gucci but also the name of the celebrity who owned it before me (or they could be anonymous if they prefer). I can buy fair trade items and know the complete history of the manufacturing chain.

How does Intertrust solve these problems?

Today, people buy goods and services in very convenient ways. They do not need a digital wallet, they do not need to use a specific currency — they simply use their phone, laptop, credit, or debit card and make the purchase. Digital goods and Phygital goods (products that bridge the digital and physical worlds) should be just as easy to buy, rent, and sell. Until this happens, this will not be a robust mass market.

Copyright Protection

Taking them one at a time:

Interoperability

Intertrust encrypts the digital asset. The block chain address is just the same, but the media object can only be consumed by someone who has the rights. It cannot be resold without the proper permissions. This is seamless to the user as Common Encryption assures that it can be watched or listened to on any of the consumer’s devices.

Flexibility in business modeling and contractual arrangements

Intertrust has always provided interoperability for media files across platforms and devices. Now we have the technology to provide it across blockchains. I can own an asset on one blockchain and sell half of that asset (say a music copyright) to someone who uses a different blockchain. Intertrust can update the original block chain reflecting the new partial ownership and also write to the new blockchain asserting the new ownership share. Both of these blockchains point to an encrypted digital contract that is signed and hashed and written to both blockchains for immutability, provenance, and accountability.

Because of Intertrust’s deep expertise in rights management, we can express almost any contractual relationship between and among parties. For example, we could say that a certain movie is only available in France in standard definition on Tuesdays between 7:00 and 11:00 PM but it is available in high definition in Amsterdam any time before June 13, 2023, if you are a member of the Bertelsmann film club.

We could also say that I have sold 50% of my music royalties in my new album but for the first 500 investors, they get paid immediately but the next 500 investors only get paid after the studio costs have been paid out of the revenues.

Integration with physical product

The possibilities are endless.

Poor user experience for average users

Intertrust are working with partners in many different markets to provide digital flexibility to the ownership of physical objects — assuring provenance, accountability, and flexibility for buying, selling, re-selling, fractional ownership, renting, and lending of all kinds of physical objects.

Though Intertrust can support crypto currencies, most of our partners prefer using fiat currencies in their local territory. It should be as easy to buy an NFT as it is to buy any other physical or digital goods and now it is.

Though apocryphal, the William Gibson attributed statement, “The future has arrived-it’s just not evenly distributed yet.” Is certainly true of NFTs. We will soon take them for granted and they will be part of the background fabric of our life. Welcome to the future.

Originally published at https://www.intertrust.com on December 21, 2023.

Contemporary information security for critical energy infrastructure is… an eggshell?

Cybersecurity for energy sites was built around the same architecture for physical security. Perimeter defenses — fences, badges, neutral zones — have been replicated with firewalls, virtual private networks (VPNs) and demilitarized zones (DMZs). Sometimes, these come with Transport Layer Security (TLS) sprinkled on top. This so-called “castle and mote” architecture trusts data so long as it comes from inside of these isolated environments.

Like an eggshell, however, VPN and TLS-reliant network security is:

• Brittle — Misconfigurations and complex networks frequently leak and expose unencrypted data.
• Hollow — Once inside, intruders can move laterally to gain control of resources within the network
• Porous — Even air-gapped systems have entry points and are at risk.
• Homogenous — Interdependent systems are vulnerable to replay attacks when hackers replicate valid data to spoof communications.

The result of these fragile defenses was put on terrifying display in the early days of the Ukraine-Russia conflict. On February 22, 2022, Germany’s Enercon reported the disruption of 5,800 turbines from a cyberattack traced to a misconfigured VPN. It would take 2 months to get 95% of the turbines back online and operational. I don’t need to be an energy executive to figure out how devastating an attack like that would be for already razor-thin margins in the wind industry.

These security approaches have their time and place. VPN was originally designed in 1995 to protect business data over insecure networks through a secure ‘tunnel’ on the network layer. TLS was similarly introduced in 1996 to handle credit card information between customers and web store servers. However, their applications are designed for information technology (IT) rather than operational technology (OT). As energy companies pursue the convergence of IT/OT systems, the attack surface from cyberthreats grows exponentially.

Securing energy’s infrastructure with a new trust approach

The digitalization and digital transformation of energy is bringing many benefits, with interconnected, data-driven systems that enhance efficiency, sustainability, and responsiveness. But these systems cannot remain secure with traditional approaches that protect the wires, not the data. Today, the next evolution of network security is built on the principles of a zero-trust architecture (ZTA). Under ZTA-based security, all traffic and data is untrusted by default. All users and devices must be authenticated before it can be accepted. ZTA proposes a system much like high-grade access control at a critical infrastructure site where a badge must be displayed at all times and any administrative task requires a trail of paperwork.

We set out to deliver a solution that extends zero trust principles for energy sites with Intertrust Virtual Operations Center (VOX). VOX is built on authentication and authorization at its very core. Access and distribution of datasets is strictly defined through fine grain governance controls. Immutable audit logs track changes and actions. Data is persistently protected at-rest and in-transit with Intertrust’s unique Explicit Private Networking (XPN) technology.

The real icing on the cake is VOX’s use of XPN for data security. XPN validates the authenticity of data during ingestion and issues secure commands for true end-to-end security from the edge to cloud and back. Here are a handful of the benefits from adopting XPN:

1. Reduced cybersecurity risk. XPN works in-line with existing protections (TLS, VPN, etc) and provides additional defense against man-in-the-middle attacks, false data injections, and device spoofing.
2. Authorized control of remote assets. Energy companies can issue authorized commands to steer wind turbines, curtail solar inverters, or turn off appliances in virtual power plants.
3. Compliance with regulatory standards. XPN provides critical data security functions that organizations require for compliance with NIST CSF, NERC CIP, and the upcoming EU Cyber Resilience Act.

XPN provides a more flexible and interoperable communications protocol by abstracting up the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) Model at the application layer. Unlike TLS, XPN can tunnel through insecure protocols like Modbus to enable strong encryption. By bridging across environments, XPN enables direct communications across industrial, enterprise, and consumer domains.

In summary, the cybersecurity landscape for energy sites is rapidly evolving, with traditional methods like VPNs and TLS proving insufficient against sophisticated cyber threats. The adoption of a zero-trust architecture (ZTA) represents a significant shift, prioritizing rigorous authentication and authorization for every user and device. Intertrust’s Virtual Operations Center (VOX) exemplifies this new era of cybersecurity, leveraging XPN technology to ensure end-to-end security and compliance with various regulatory standards. VOX’s approach, with its focus on persistent protection and fine-grain governance controls, offers a robust solution to the vulnerabilities exposed by contemporary network security methods.

For energy companies looking to secure their critical infrastructure against emerging cyber threats, embracing this new paradigm is crucial. If you’re interested in discussing how these advanced cybersecurity solutions can be tailored to protect your energy site, or if you wish to learn more about how VOX and XPN can enhance your operation, feel free to reach out.

Let’s chat about safeguarding your operations in this ever-evolving digital landscape and ensure your energy infrastructure is designed with the most robust and advanced security measures available.

Originally published at https://www.intertrust.com on December 7, 2023.

This installment of our energy digitalization series examines how some energy companies are answering wind power project financial difficulties by consolidating wind farm management, monitoring, and operations across sites and shifts.

The wind industry is at a crossroads. Equinor and Orsted, two of the world’s largest wind developers, recently announced multi-billion dollar write downs on major wind projects. These difficulties reflect the sector’s economic challenges, driven by higher interest rates and supply chain inflation. Yet, while some wind developers are insisting on greater government subsidies, others are forging ahead with a more sustainable approach.

The wind sector has always had a challenging business model. Wind energy projects depend on high initial investments with fluctuating production and price levels. To mitigate financial risk, wind project developers secure fixed revenues through power purchasing agreements (PPAs). Their bottom line depends on maintaining or expanding the margin between operating costs and the contract power purchase price.

Unable to control the weather or the price of electricity, wind site managers are increasingly turning to consolidating monitoring through centralized control rooms to improve operational efficiency. A recent assessment by BVG Associates estimates that the average 450 MW offshore wind site spends around $660,000 (£540,000) per year for one control center. In the United Kingdom, RWE has built a new hub that provides a one-team approach for 2.2 GW across two of the largest offshore wind power sites in the world. Across the pond in Latin America, Enel has deployed their own multi-site control rooms.

However, the transition from non-consolidated to centralized operations is fraught with challenges. Traditional operations in the wind sector often involve multiple, isolated control rooms, each dedicated to a specific site. Different farms use turbines, sensors, and control room software from dozens of vendors. The lack of a unified operational view inhibits operators from optimizing performance and impedes the deployment of innovations in predictive maintenance and AI. The result is pervasive inefficiency, a death knell in an industry where maximizing uptime and efficiency is essential for profitability.

At Intertrust, we developed Virtual Operations Center (VOX) to comprehensively integrate data from dozens of sites into a single pane of glass for operations and maintenance. With VOX, energy operators can transfer control between sites without friction. The ability to dynamically assume control in any location allows wind companies to reduce operating costs without impacting their revenue. Here are a few examples of seamless operational transfer in action:

Consolidated nighttime operations — With most maintenance occurring during daytime, wind farms require less engaged monitoring during evening hours. By consolidating the monitoring of multiple sites to a single centralized control room during off-hour periods, wind turbine companies can reduce their staffing. With VOX, night-time operators at remote control rooms share a common operating picture, enabling a seamless handover and limiting operational expenses.

Workforce flexibility — The retirement of nearly 50% of utility workers over the next decade is creating a huge strain on workforce planning and an impending risk of a labor shortage. With tailored, uniform screens, VOX speeds up onboarding and improves workforce flexibility. As new recruits are being trained, operators and technicians from other sites can fill in without having to learn an entirely new system. With greater worker availability, energy companies can avoid overuse of overtime and reduce human capital costs.

AI and automation — Control rooms today operate in silos, unable to leverage insights and innovations from one site to the next. VOX provides a unified interface for integrations with predictive maintenance, portfolio management, and large language models. Operators can quickly operationalize energy orchestration, anomaly detection and even ChatGPT-style agents. You can find more on how VOX enables AI from the previous entry in this blog series .

As energy companies continue to navigate financial headwinds, the industry as a whole is rethinking and reforming its operational model. The ability to dynamically assume control in any location is emerging as a vital capability for operators. As the wind industry continues to evolve, embracing innovative solutions will be crucial to optimize energy production performance and sustain long-term profitability.

VOX empowers wind developers to overcome disparate data systems to streamline management across multiple sites. Our goal with VOX is to pave the way for more resilient, efficient, and economically viable operations through the full end-to-end digitalization of the energy industry.

If you are interested to learn more about how VOX can support your operation, please don’t hesitate to reach out!

Originally published at https://www.intertrust.com on November 30, 2023.

The second installment of our energy digitalization series explores how AI technology can bring new real-time optimization efficiencies across these complex energy operations.

Across the world, the transition to renewable energy has driven generation companies to diversify their portfolios with renewable sources. With hundreds of megawatts of new utility-scale solar and wind sites planned over the next decade, renewable energy stakeholders often ask, “Can we supply electricity to the grid through a more sustainable and cost-effective approach?”

The short answer is yes, with the right infrastructure, machine learning, and informed, real-time response. The long answer is more complicated. Until recently, energy sites were islanded, operating in a vacuum. The rollout of AI and diversified portfolio management has made this status quo untenable. Coordinating and optimizing sites that run on separate but interdependent systems come with significant difficulties in operations, monitoring, management and compliance. Here are a few of these challenges:

• Weather variability. The availability of wind and sunlight can fluctuate, affecting performance and maintenance windows and making it essential to predict weather conditions.
• Resource availability. The availability of the skilled workforce and equipment also dictate maintenance windows, making it essential to capture schedules and availability.
• Grid congestion. Connecting to the electrical grid and managing the flow of energy to and from the grid requires careful planning and coordination, especially when dealing with multiple plants.
• Security and resilience. Multiplant sites with diverse energy assets operate systems that cross or muddy the traditional perimeter line, creating new security concerns to protect against potential cyber threats, extreme weather events, or natural disasters.
• Regulatory compliance. Compliance with environmental regulations, safety standards, and energy market rules can be a major challenge, as each energy source may be subject to different regulatory requirements.

Throwing the switch on AI and new optimization opportunities

Diversified portfolio management is a strategic approach that optimizes the use of various energy sources to improve reliability, efficiency, and profitability. Underlying diversified portfolio management is AI.

As the world grapples with the pressing need to transition to sustainable and renewable energy sources, artificial intelligence (AI) emerges as a powerful change agent. By managing a mix of energy assets with the help of AI, operators can adapt to market demands and technological advancements, ensuring a resilient energy supply:

• Grid stability. Adjusting energy output in response to grid conditions is crucial. A diversified portfolio can leverage real-time data to dynamically balance the load between different energy sources, such as ramping up hydroelectric power during peak energy demand or dialing back solar production during low usage periods, ensuring grid stability and operational efficiency.
• Battery storage. The integration of battery storage systems allows for excess energy generated from intermittent sources like wind and solar to be stored and then utilized when production dips or demand surges. This not only provides a buffer against variability but also maintains a consistent energy supply, to increase reliability and enhance the overall resilience of the portfolio.
• Price optimization. By actively managing a diversified energy portfolio, operators can take advantage of fluctuating energy prices. For example, they can store energy when prices are low and release it into the grid when prices are high, maximizing financial returns. Furthermore, the presence of multiple energy sources allows for flexible selling strategies, optimizing revenue streams across different markets.

Embrace AI-enabling technology

AI applications are everywhere. In today’s competitive energy landscape, we must embrace AI-enabling software that facilitate modular growth while protecting current investments in existing infrastructure. In this new wave of digital transformation, consider adopting a leading edge digital operations center that is architecturally open and allows you scale at your own pace.

Intertrust’s Virtual Operations Center ( VOX ) provides a robust architecture and secure data interoperability for your AI and application-enabling needs. VOX gives you the foundation to incorporate the best AI applications, including your own proprietary analytics. Plus, it gives you a robust and predictable environment where you can rapidly improve action-oriented execution while innovating for growth in the future.

The future of sustainable energy

AI’s integration into renewable energy management is a pivotal moment in a paradigm shift for the industry. It’s enabling us to reduce dependency on fossil fuels and unlock the full potential of renewable resources-making them more reliable and cost-effective. As we harness AI for real-time analysis and new models of energy optimization, we’re not only powering our present but also paving the way for a sustainable, clean energy future.

Originally published at https://www.intertrust.com on November 13, 2023.

There is a major problem in the energy industry and no one wants to talk about it.

It was there when I visited a hydroelectric control room that had a dissolved oxygen dashboard without notification alerts. I heard about it at a thermal plant where managers were exchanging excel files to compare performance. I read about it in a wind cybersecurity report detailing how the Open Platform Communications (OPC) spec recommends that vendors put assets in a “read-only” mode.

If you haven’t guessed it, the problem I am talking about is managing siloed multi-vendor systems. The OEM-led digital transformation of the energy industry has left companies with a maze of single use dashboards, disjointed processes, and haphazard workarounds.

This state of affairs is difficult when managing a single site and impossible at scale. Not only are existing operations impeded, the latest advances in energy orchestration, climate impact modeling, and AI are also left tantalizingly out of reach.

We designed the Intertrust Virtual Operations Center (VOX) to realize that original vision of an interconnected energy ecosystem. VOX is not just an incremental change, it represents a paradigm shift from closed, vendor-segregated stacks to an open, distributed data/device architecture.

To understand the difference in approach, imagine a forest teeming with trees and large ferns. The trees, isolated and independent, are akin to siloed systems each drawing from its own resources. Data can often only flow within one system and in one direction.

Now picture the ferns, sprawling and interweaving with one another, their fronds and root systems overlapping and connecting in a vast network. This is the vision embodied by VOX. Alerts, commands, and data can move in a governed fashion across multiple systems in any direction.

Where energy digitalization has come to mean stilting your operations upon any number of proprietary software stacks, VOX has been built from the ground up to unleash the potential of an integrated energy landscape. Here are just a few of the essential value adds for energy companies:

Agile data operations: VOX brings unified, governed access control across disparate data sources, making it simpler and more efficient for data consumers to find and use the information they need. This approach ensures that analysts can leverage data more effectively, fostering better insights and real-time business decisions.

Persistent data protection: VOX uses Intertrust’s Explicit Private Networking (XPN) to authenticate and authorize IoT devices, commands, and applications, guaranteeing your operational data is persistently protected across untrusted networks. With XPN, VOX provides end-to-end security and enhanced trust in your data and devices.

Single point of truth reporting: All data, actions, and access rights are captured and auditable to ensure consistency and ease in generating performance and compliance reporting, greatly streamlining operations.

IT/OT convergence: Comprehensive integration of IT and OT data coupled with authorized commands provides energy companies a single pane of glass to monitor and control their operations, leading to better decisions, improved efficiency, and reduced costs.

AI enablement: By unifying siloed environments into seamless data flows, VOX sets the stage for AI-driven initiatives, including predictive maintenance, production forecasting, demand response, and virtual power plants.

With these advances, VOX opens the next chapter in the digital transformation of the energy sector. An open device/data architecture allows us to start thinking of distributed energy resources as distributed energy ecosystems. Over the next few months, my colleagues and I will be exploring what such a future could look like from just-in-time scheduled maintenance to the simultaneous balancing of consumer loads, transmission constraints, and generation assets through energy orchestration.

There’s no denying that the digital transformation of energy is vital for a future of smarter, cleaner electricity production. It’s high time that our energy systems reflected the brighter future that they aim to create.

If any of the points I’ve highlighted resonated with your own experience, don’t hesitate to reach out to me. I am always interested in learning more about the challenges of siloed multi-vendor systems and what digital tools or solutions any of you have encountered.

Originally published at https://www.intertrust.com on November 8, 2023.

Intertrust is pleased to announce that Intertrust Platform now natively supports three additional databases: ClickHouse , MongoDB Atlas , and . These three databases provide developers even more alternatives for efficiently handling large amounts of high-throughput IoT data, a key Intertrust Platform use case.

ClickHouse and Timescale are open-source SQL-based databases with rapid data ingestion capabilities, making them a popular choice for developers who need to work with real-time IoT data to feed dashboards and analytics and prefer open-source solutions. MongoDB is a noSQL solution focused on large datasets in the billion-plus records range, making it well suited for installations with large numbers of IoT devices.

One of Intertrust Platform’s main objectives is to maintain a highly flexible and useful environment for our developers. Our increased support for a range of database technologies is the latest development in this effort and we look forward to providing you with more feature upgrades in the near future.

Originally published at https://www.intertrust.com on October 18, 2023.