GREEN TECHNOLOGY AND SUSTAINABILITY
Katie McGinty, the firm’ s Vice President and Chief Sustainability and External Relations Officer, says Johnson Controls tech at Stanford University has led to a 20 % reduction in peak energy demand and generated yearly savings of US $ 500,000.
“ We can achieve on the order of 10 % to 20 % additional emission reductions, even for brand new buildings and those with the highest level of green certification,” Katie says.“ When those buildings were inaugurated and initiated, they may have been tuned so that they had the highest level of green performance, but over time those set points get changed or those set points migrate.”
Here, the transition back to the main smart grid narrative is critical: smart buildings aren’ t just isolated efficiency upgrades, but are becoming distributed energy resources capable of balancing load, providing storage and supplying power when the grid most needs it. In short, the same intelligence transforming grid operations is now embedded at the level of individual buildings – making every node in the network smarter and more responsive.
Curating the grid of the future The journey from centralised, one-way energy delivery to an intelligent, interactive smart grid is well underway as AI, IoT and advanced analytics optimise existing systems and redefine the relationship between generation, distribution
“LEADING OPERATORS ARE TAKING CONTROL OF THEIR DESTINY BY EITHER DEVELOPING ON-SITE GENERATION CAPABILITIES WITH MICROGRIDS OR FORMING STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIPS WITH UTILITY PROVIDERS”
Ciaran Flanagan, Vp and Global Head of Data Centre Solutions and Services Siemens
and consumption. Sensor‐dense IoT architectures are creating a continuous data layer across the grid, enabling millisecond-by-millisecond awareness. Edge computing and AI models – from advanced forecasting algorithms to reinforcement learning optimisers – are turning that data into predictive, automated control decisions.
The smart grid of the future is less a single piece of infrastructure and more a distributed, software‐defined platform – one where every sensor, node and algorithm contributes to a resilient, high‐efficiency, low‐carbon energy network. technologymagazine. com 193