Power Management in the Information Age: Navigating the Energy Challenges of Digitalisation

With waves of digitalisation sweeping through the world, ensuring the efficient generation, distribution, and usage of power will help this revolution to continue unabated in future.

December 19, 2023. By News Bureau

Tags:

articles

Power management

Digital device

Digitalisation infrastructure

Investment

High Energy Demand

UPES ON

Greenhouse gas emissions

Transmission

Energy generation

Global spending on digital infrastructure is expected to reach USD 3.4 tn by 2026 and along with this expansion, the demand for energy to power these digital devices will also grow manifold. Even today, the world is investing heavily in digitalisation infrastructure and to run, manage, and operate digital networks, devices, and infrastructure, an uninterrupted flow of power is necessary.

Given the energy shortage that we are experiencing worldwide, it will be a daunting challenge for power companies to efficiently navigate the energy challenges that are associated with the ongoing wave of digitalisation.

Here's a close look at some of these specific challenges and strategies for how these can be addressed in an effective and efficient manner:

Energy Challenges: Compelling Realities

High Energy Demand: The rapid proliferation of digital infrastructure has resulted in an exponential rise in energy demand. The electricity need of the IT sector alone will grow with a 5 percent CAGR and will be 50 percent more to reach 3200 TWh by 2030. A chunk of this demand emanates from building, operating, and managing large data centres and network equipment along with powering the IoT devices and information flow between players in the business ecosystems. Clearly with more and more organisations embracing the digital revolution, the demand for energy is going to multiply going forward. How to meet this high demand is a primary challenge for power firms; this calls for a comprehensive expansion of their current capacities to meet the extra requirements arising from the digital transformation of the world.

Emission Issues: Generating more power means burning more fossil fuels as the limited efficiency of renewables in producing power might not prove sufficient to meet the exponentially surging demand for electricity. Given the fact that the power and heat sector registered the highest absolute increase in emissions in 2022 to 14.6 Gt, expanding the power generation capacities will further increase the release of greenhouse gases and intensify climate change. The challenge for energy corporations is to minimise environmental degradation by restricting emissions while enhancing their generative capacity at the same time.

Infrastructure Limitation: Energy generation is a complex process that requires heavy machinery, equipment, and expansive physical infrastructure among others. Arranging all these assets in itself is a challenge, especially when it comes to the physical infrastructure to set up the power generation plants, transmission lines, power grids, etc. As demand for power is increasing by the day, the challenge for power companies is to arrange for these facilities in a sustainable manner while pushing for the achievement of the desired targets on power generation.

Strategies to Efficiently Power Digital Devices

The key to managing power challenges in digitalisation lies in generating power sustainably, utilising it optimally, and managing operations efficiently. Not only does this holistic approach help to ensure the optimum utilisation of energy but also enhances the overall sustainability of the sector by minimising losses and wastage during transmission and operations. Here are specific strategies that can help power companies navigate complex energy challenges associated with digital transformation:

Virtual Connect and Consolidation Synergy: By enabling virtual connect, firms can run several machines virtually by connecting them to one or two physical servers. This reduces the requirements of a total number of physical servers and results in saving a lot of energy at data centres, server stations, and data warehouses among others. Similarly adopting the consolidation strategy wherein workloads are transferred to the specific data centres which are more energy efficient leads to minimising losses and achieving maximum energy efficiency of operations. Both these measures can be applied in conjunction and can help firms operate at the peak of their efficiency and address the challenges related to power management in the ever-expanding digital era.

Efficient Hardware: One of the prominent ways to decrease power consumption in digital devices is to use energy-efficient hardware in data centres, warehouses, and other equipment related to digital infrastructure. From data servers and switches to smart sensors and IoT devices, the process of upgrading to energy-efficient devices can offer significant savings in energy consumption by offering high operating efficiency and reduced power losses. As data centres and network hardware are responsible for the maximum consumption of energy, saving power here can prove to be a game changer for reducing energy consumption in digital devices.

Transition to Renewables: Switching to renewable sources of energy can help meet the energy demands of digital transformation in a sustainable manner. The world is fast moving to maximise the share of renewable power with total installed capacity all set to reach 440 GW by the end of this year. This transition will reduce the carbon footprints of the power sector and enable the development of greener digital infrastructure going forward. Power companies can either establish on-site renewable plants or source clean energy from other producers to meet the increasing demands of power by the digital infrastructure.

Efficient Distribution and Monitoring: The use of new-age technologies such as AI, ML, and automation can help firms efficiently distribute and monitor the consumption of energy. These innovations allow firms to identify areas where energy consumption is high and accordingly devise strategies to optimise their power distribution and monitoring systems. The insights offered by IoT devices can help firms analyse the energy usage patterns of devices and implement measures to minimise the losses. Some of the significant strategies that can be used to optimise the consumption of energy in the digital space include workload balancing, effective cooling systems, and optimum power management among others.

Creating Ecosystem: An important strategy to elevate power consumption efficiency in the digital world is the creation of an ecosystem which should comprise stakeholders from both power and digital industries. This arrangement should then facilitate the coordination, collaboration, and communication between these industries' stakeholders and encourage them to share best practices, deliberate collectively power challenges, and devise strategies for maximising energy efficiency in their own respective fields.

Digitalisation is opening new avenues of opportunities for stakeholders across industrial vectors and the constellation of new-age technologies is changing the very face the world operates today. To help everyone realise the benefits of digital infrastructure, there is a need to have a holistic power generation, distribution, and management strategy that will maximise the energy efficiency of digital devices while their power losses. The strategy must also take into account sustainability as lowering emissions is among the compelling requirements that all of us need to stick to in every plan and action we go ahead with. In sum, all stakeholders in the digital and power industries should come together and strive collectively to address the power challenges of digitalisation.

- Dr. Naveen Agrawal, Assistant Professor, Power Management, UPES ON