Guided Innovation Alliance Ltd

Collaboration: the Key to Energy Innovation

GIA is an industry–research alliance shortening the pathway to market for new innovations in the electricity sector.

Challenging Environment

This is a time of great change for the electricity industry. The demand for affordable, high quality, high reliability electricity to power our digital world is increasing. Rapid social and technology change presents risks along with opportunities. Recent experience suggests that despite best efforts, the rate of change can still overtake the capacity of the industry to respond – mass adoption of residential air conditioning and more recently Solar PV are good examples. The global demand for electricity to support our digital lifestyles seems insatiable. Converging issues of customer affordability, low carbon electricity supply, safe access, regulatory changes, customer behaviour, technological change and environmental responsibility are combining to create a dynamically changing industry. Electricity distribution is rapidly moving from analogue to digital. The disaggregated structure of the electricity industry does not readily lend itself to solutions which address equitable sharing across the various stakeholders in the value chain. In this structure new innovative models based on holistic systems thinking must be created to transition us to a sustainable energy future.

Key challenges include:

• Increasing customer expectations for affordability, service and choice;
• Mitigation of peakier loads to improve supply costs, capital spend and asset capital efficiency;
• Improving the level of demand side participation;
• Life extension and performance improvement of aging and stressed networks; and
• Reduced environmental impacts including increased renewables contribution.