NEW YORK – Hitachi America, Ltd. and Hitachi, Ltd. (TSE:6501), today announced that, together with Hitachi’s group companies, new innovations for realizing Utility 3.0 via the Lumada IoT platform will be introduced at DistribuTECH 2018 (booth #3009).
The energy market has reached a turning point toward Utility 3.0, a concept in the energy sector aimed at forming an increasingly smarter society by advancing decarbonization, decentralization and digitalization. This helps contribute to Society 5.0, a concept which balances the solution to social problems with economic development by the system, fusing together virtual space and physical space. A range of efforts in the energy sector have started to build a new energy society that requires innovations that go beyond industry borders.
At this event, under the theme “Realizing Utility 3.0,” Hitachi will demonstrate new innovations centered on various systems, including the distributed energy facilities and power distribution equipment known as Grid Edge, which operate at locations close to consumers, in order to realize Utility 3.0 through the use of Lumada, Hitachi’s Internet of Things (IoT) Platform. Lumada combines the cultivated operational technology (OT) in the power and energy fields to date and the advanced information technology (IT) represented by data analytics.
Through this exhibition at DistribuTECH 2018, the Hitachi Group will collaborate with customers and partners worldwide in the energy sector. This is one of the core domains of the company’s social innovation business, aiming to expand its presence in the global energy solution market, including North America.
Major Exhibits
1. Lumada IoT Platform
Hitachi presents the Lumada IoT Platform, an infrastructure that is working to create new value for the future of society.
2. Grid Security Assessment and Enhancement
Hitachi presents a solution currently active in Poland, which implements advanced Japanese technologies to stabilize systems and to control the output of wind energy in real time, as well as battery energy storage systems. It also presents its smart grid business in the United States, aimed at expanding the introduction of alternative energy and promoting energy saving, as well as the next-generation power grid and smart community business in Slovenia to build a cloud-based integrated distribution management system for small and mid-sized electricity distribution companies.
3. Digital Energy Services
Hitachi presents a program that is carried out together with stadtwerke (a small-scale communal business entity), which is responsible for regional energy and infrastructure services in Germany, to simultaneously allow trade liberalization in response to transaction prices in the electricity market and optimization regarding the operation plans of power facilities. It also presents activities such as the demonstration of Japan’s large-scale battery energy storage system, demand response promoted in North America and Europe, as well as a Virtual Power Plant using electric vehicles and heat pumps as distributed energy sources on the consumer side, which are integrated and utilized for system operation.
4. Energy Resource Optimization
Hitachi presents the Predictive Diagnosis Solution to assist in productivity improvement by predicting renewable energy output, such as wind energy promoted in North America and India, and by securing facility maintenance and safe operation in which the remaining useful life prognoses are now served.
About Utility 3.0
Utility 3.0 is a concept showing an evolved situation where “utilities,” which are responsible for public businesses such as electricity, comprehensively take responsibility for social infrastructures through reform drivers, such as decarbonization, decentralization and digitalization. Utility 1.0 was the period when the electricity industry emerged and supported economic growth under regulatory protections. Utility 2.0 is the period (current) when the electricity system reform initiated power generation and competition in retail.