relayr
POWER GENERATION FOR A SMARTER WORLD Envisioning the future of energy production is, like many areas of prediction, very often overtaken by facts on the ground. There was a time, c. 50 years ago, when the future seemed to hinge on the construction of colossal power plants reliant on nuclear or fossil fuels. The next wave of optimism and hype hung on the much anticipated but, to date, under-performing field of hydrogen technologies. These are still being invested in and developed, and are a particular focus for some car manufacturers, however, scientific consensus on climate change in developed economies has changed considerably in the meantime, causing planners to effectively abandon their former models. Centralized power production using fossil fuels or nuclear technology in largescale plants is no longer a vision of the future that climate change scientists, regulators and growing majorities of voters buy into.
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www.amps.org.uk
As the future of power production is moving away from centralized models, it is turning instead toward distributed energy resources and even much smaller individual energy producers. Decentralized or distributed generation typically uses renewable energy sources or cogeneration to create cleaner, cheaper power for small clusters of users. As these smaller clusters have grown exponentially, regulatory change and technological advancement is playing a catch-up game in respect of linking up these independent sources into main grids. A fully synchronized future can only be realized through sustained development of innovate power generation equipment and continued innovation in digital IIoT solutions for the industry. In essence, a combination of IIoT digitalization and engineering advances will underpin the so-called Internet of Energy coming into being.
