Production, mobility and communication all rely on reliable energy supply that is both cost-effective and long-term available. When developing innovative supply concepts using renewable energies as the backbone for these systems, accurate digital twins must be created along with tools for planning, operating, automating and monitoring these innovative concepts.

Digitalisation offers immense promise to accelerate the clean energy transition. Electricity systems could use digitalisation to integrate higher shares of variable renewables while simultaneously improving grid reliability, while end-use sectors could increase material efficiency and facilitate behavioral changes through it. Data centres and transmission networks supporting digitalisation contributed 330 Mt CO2 equivalent emissions in 2020 (including their own emissions), yet have great potential as low-carbon and efficient energy assets.

Today’s utilities lag behind in providing their customers with real-time electricity usage data due to complex meter and control systems requiring communications channels beyond dial-up Internet or cellular. Digitisation can help utilities catch up by uploading real-time meter and control data directly onto servers while downloading control messages to manage switches or relays remotely.

Digital energy provides consumers with new services, including time-of-day pricing of their power usage. This can result in savings of hundreds or thousands per customer every month when using digital energy solutions to maximize off-peak consumption and avoid peak charges; however, for this to work efficiently it requires incentives from their energy provider; which is why the IEA suggests policy makers create technology-neutral platforms and policies to encourage companies to develop solutions of their own and find innovative business models.