Executive summary
Standardization plays a key role in improving all the energy industry players, including network companies, to build new reliable, resilient, efficient, safe, and sustainable grid infrastructures, which increasingly are more and more crucial for the energy transition. It is a necessary foundation for succeeding with digitalization, electrification, sustainability, and increased reliability and resilience of the electrical system.
Deployment of standardized and sustainable solutions would foster the development of the whole electrical ecosystem, enabling innovation and also helping to meet the Net Zero targets by reducing greenhouse emissions provoked by power distribution grids, for instance, through the reduction of network losses and the implementation of eco-friendly materials, components, and devices.
Deep standardization of components and their interfaces and solutions can lead to benefits and reduced efforts for all the relevant stakeholders in the supply chain: engineering, procurement, testing, market supply availability, construction, operation, maintenance, asset management, and end-of-life management, leading to overall cost reduction.
Further, adopting common standards by all the relevant stakeholders can drive constant performance and quality improvement of technical solutions, business processes, and stakeholder interactions.
There are some downsides to developing, maintaining, and implementing standards. They contribute to increased complexity and (short-term) cost, but also a risk that (over-) standardization limits innovation. These can be mitigated by evaluating benefits over time and utilizing open standards.
To better enable the benefits of standardization, CIRED makes the following recommendations:
- Standards are the fundamental need for society as a whole and individual stakeholders to succeed with digitalization, electrification, sustainability, and increased resilience – and they need to evolve over time, thus requiring continuous work and alignment.
- A standardization process should be adopted to define systems standards for maximizing interoperability, transferability, or convergence among operators of large, interconnected areas.
- Based on cost-benefit analysis, actively phase out legacy and proprietary solutions (components, IT systems, life cycle management methods) and adopt open standards.
- Take an active part in developing, sharing, and using open standards as well as space to innovate – do it also through young professionals to ensure endurance.