Hitachi’s Collaborative Creation with Customers-based Work on Energy Solutions to Boost Business in North America

The North American energy market is growing steadily amid a rapid switch to renewables. 2016 saw the establishment of the Energy Solutions Division (ESD), a new Hitachi business unit designed to grow our energy business in North America. We have started a full-scale move into the North American energy market that will draw on the experience and expertise we have accumulated from several overseas demonstration projects and our work in Japan. We want to provide the region’s power transmission grid and local distribution grids with advanced energy solutions tailored to local needs.

Microgrids Provide an Entry Point for Utility Solutions

What are you working on specifically?

SeijiOur three main work areas are microgrids, grid stabilization systems and storage battery systems. Demanding national security requirements are imposed on SIPSs for the transmission grid, making it difficult to take part in them all at once. But we’re doing well in the area of microgrids, receiving orders for microgrid feasibility studies in New York and other states. So we’re going to start by using microgrids as a foothold for getting actual orders.

AramThe U.S. Grid is very vulnerable. Policies have led to significant infrastructure under investment. When combined with increased severity of weather events and cyber and physical attacks, vulnerability to prolonged power outages has increased significantly. Customers, utilities and policy makers are looking at microgrids as one way to provide greater energy resilience. The market is early though and microgrids are complex technically, and from a business model standpoint. We are focused on streamlining the evaluation, design, project execution, financing, operations and maintenance to make it easier for customers to choose and deploy a microgrid. The vendors that truly enable a ‘one stop shop’ experience will capture significant early market share.

MoritaLocal distribution microgrids are important for ensuring stable power supply and operation, but transmission grid approaches are also crucial. Our work on the transmission grid includes developing an online remedial action scheme (RAS). It’s an online protection/control system for ensuring grid stability. We are also working on using phasor measurement units (PMUs) with the transmission grid. (A PMU is like a stethoscope for grids.) Since the Northeast blackout of 2003, grid stability has become an area of major concern in the US. The grid protection systems currently in use are offline RAS systems, but we’re assuming demand for online systems enabling real-time control when operators need to respond immediately to output variation and other dynamic changes in power sources. We already have a domestic track record in this area, and are looking to expand into global markets through collaborative creation activities with the overseas power companies.

Energy solution provided by Hitachi

Reimporting Successes from North America Back to Japan

Finally, what are your plans for the future?

AramMicrogrids are just one of many opportunities emerging as the market transitions to a more distributed, digital system. ESD plans to further strengthen its portfolio and provide solutions tailored to market needs.

We will continue to work with our customers to develop solutions that would help solve the challenges they are facing.

We want to expand our range of energy solutions offerings to include grid stabilization technology, energy storage systems, demand response programs and virtual power plants.

We will provide solutions that would help to resolve issues caused by increased penetration of distributed energy resources in the grid, and are working very closely with various teams in Hitachi. An example of this is the collaboration with Lumada team to provide an Energy IoT platform supporting our multiple business models mentioned before. The Lumada team is primarily responsible for the IT side of the solutions. The ESD team acts as system integrator and is primarily responsible for the OT aspects of the systems and any “custom” software module needs for the IT system, such as OT configuration, data filtering, and optimization algorithms.

MoritaTo create a new value through microgrid related R&D, we want to create more opportunities for talking directly to operators to identify genuine issues that even customers haven’t noticed. CSI North America wants to use the Lumada internet of things (IoT) platform to create an energy-IoT environment. Edge computing will be applied to distributed energy resources such as wind power, and remote machine learning used to predict power generation output. We’re going to augment this set of core solutions, using them to drive business growth. We plan to work on various endeavors as a member of a unified global team.

SeijiPower system reform is moving ahead in Japan. The full liberalization of Japan’s power industry started in 2016, and the power transmission and distribution sectors will be separated in 2020. With the creation of real-time markets providing a ‘negawatt’ transaction environment acting as a coordinating force, Japan is probably going to end up having the same type of environment as the US, which is a world leader in power industry liberalization. As we do business in North America, we want to reimport the successes and expertise we acquire there back to Japan to provide system solutions tailored to Japan’s unique rules and environment, and to demands for stabilization arising from the use of renewables on a mass scale.