Industry insights
How to secure renewable energy operations - top use cases of how energy companies use iPaaS 2024
As renewable energy producers (REPs) face growing operational complexities and tightening margins, Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) emerges as a transformative solution. In this whitepaper , we look into the strategic adoption of iPaaS to address formidable challenges in the industry and insights from industry leaders.
The landscape of challenges in the renewable energy sector
REPs are dealing with a myriad of operational challenges that are impacting scalability and efficiency. These challenges range from aging on-premises technologies to siloed IT and operational technology (OT) processes, which hinder the seamless integration and agility needed to manage growing asset portfolios effectively. According to Gartner®, “by 2025, 35% of new investments in renewable energy industrial assets will incorporate intelligent asset design features to support autonomous operations and control risks.”
Renewable energy technology is often fragmented and deployed in silos, creating organisational friction and increasing costs. REPs are revisiting technology choices to improve operations across their asset portfolio and address tightening operating margins - Gartner.
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Path towards migrating from legacy to hybrid
To facilitate the transition towards intelligent operations and moving away from legacy and siloed systems, CIOs and decision-makers need to define a future technology state that will empower their organisation to achieve enhanced business outcomes in the hybrid environment that will enable the connection of physical and digital energy assets.
"To support en evolution toward intelligent operations, CIOs must articulate the future technology state that will enable their organisation to deliver improved business outcomes. This future state must be mapped from current-state capabilities (undertaking a benchmarking tailor this strategic roadmap to support the rollout of identified capabilities" - Gartner.
Top use cases of energy companies using iPaaS
Caruna and Frends
Integrating disparate technology systems
The energy sector's reliance on varied technology deployments leads to significant management challenges and data discrepancies. iPaaS provides a unified platform that integrates disparate systems, ensuring consistent data flows and reducing management overhead.
Key benefits:
What Caruna achieved with Frends iPaaS:
- Enhancement in data integration efficiency
Supporting renewable energy initiatives
Integrating renewable energy sources like solar and wind into existing grids is crucial as the world shifts towards renewable energy. iPaaS faciilities this integration, supporting the management and scalability of renewable resources.
Caruna utilizes iPaaS to manage the integration of renewable energy sources into their grid effectively, aiding Finland's transition to carbon neutrality.
Frends iPaaS player a significant role in supporting our strategy to ensure smooth customer transitions through energy transformations and achieving sustainability goals - says Janne Hyyrynen, ICT Manager at Caruna
Key benefits
What Caruna achieved with Frends iPaaS:
- Integration of renewable energy sources: facilitates smoother integration of renewable resources.
- Enhancement of carbon neutrality goals: supports sustainable operations and compliance with environmental standards.
Accelerating sustainability
Sandviken Energi and Frends
Sandviken Energi, a versatile energy company, has effectively utilized Frends iPaaS to enhance its operations and drive sustainable initiatives. As an energy provider committed to fostering a sustainable society, Sandviken Energy faces the challenge of modernising its IT architecture to support a broad range of services from district heating to broadband.
Frends iPaaS has been pivotal in enabling us to meet our sustainability goals and improving our service delivery - says Anders Lindberg, Solution Architect at Sandviken Energi.
What Sandviken Energi achieved with Frends iPaaS
Streamlined operations: Frends iPaaS helped integrate various operations, reducing process time and increasing efficiency.
Enhanced speed: transitioned case management updates from every five minutes to every other second, improving process speed by 179 times.
Key benefits
Integration of sustainable energy practices: Supports the integration of renewable energy sources and reduction of carbon footprint.
Enhancement of efficiency and productivity: achieved high efficiency and versatility in operational processes, significantly boosting productivity.
Improved real-time data processing: real-time updated facilitated better management and decision-making, crucial for energy distribution and emergency responses.
GDPR compliance and enhanced security: local agent servers addressed security and GDPR concerns effectively, ensuring compliance and safeguarding data.
Seamless integration with existing systems: Frends iPaaS integrated smoothly with existing BPMN-based process tools, streamlining operations and management.
Savon Voima and Frends
Enhancing data management and analytics
Challenges in data ingestion and limitations posed by OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturers) data lockouts are significant hurdles. iPaaS enables enhanced data management capabilities, allowing REPs to harness comprehensive analytics for better decision-making and operational efficiency.
Savon Voima is a prominent Finnish energy company and the leading energy brand in Eastern Finland, focusing on electricity transmission, production, and district heating. Using iPaaS, Savon Voima has enabled data-driven strategies that enhance predictive maintenance and load management, crucial for maintaining service reliability and optimizing network operations.
With iPaaS, we could enable data-driven leadership, centralising and analysing data from various sources for better decision-making and operational efficiency - says Tuomas Räsänen, Director, Business Technologies at Savon Voima
Numeral insight:
Enabled 80% of all integrations in just six months
Supported a 20% improvement in load management efficiency
Helen and Frends
Standardising processes and enhancing cybersecurity
Energy companies face stringent regulatory requirements, making compliance a complex and resource-intensive task. iPaaS helps by automating data collection and reporting processes, ensuring accuracy and consistency across documents required by regulatory bodies.
Other critical vulnerabilities in renewable energy operations include a lack of standardized processes and cybersecurity integration. iPaaS helps standardize and automate workflows while integrating advanced security features to protect sensitive data and operations.
The integration platform simplifies compliance by automating data handling, which is essential for our extensive network and utility services - says Integration Manager at Helen
Customer insight
Helen leverages iPaaS to manage and automate the data essential for regulatory compliance, thereby simplifying the complexities associated with regulatory standards.
Customer insight
Helen leverages iPaaS to manage and automate the data essential for regulatory compliance, thereby simplifying the complexities associated with regulatory standards.
Key benefits achieved with iPaaS:
The integration platform simplifies compliance by automating data handling, which is essential for our extensive network and utility services.
The path forward
As REPs transition towards more integrated and intelligent operations, iPaaS stands out as a key enabler. Gartner predicts that “by 2026, 20% of REPs will have embraced intelligent industrial assets enabled by intelligent operations to slash their operations and maintenance (O&M) costs.”
According to Gartner, “CIOs should focus efforts on evolving business and operating models. Technology investments must support composable capabilities that will enable intelligent operations.” Gartner proposes a “Strategic Roadmap Timeline for Intelligent Renewable.
Energy operations that illustrates year-by-year steps that a company should take, can be seen on the picture.
Conclusion
The consideration of iPaaS in renewable energy operations represents a strategic response to a complex array of challenges. Through integrating disparate systems, enhancing data management, and standardization of processes, iPaaS provides a robust framework that addresses immediate operational needs and sets the stage for future advancements in renewable energy technology. As the sector modernizes, iPaaS will continue to play a critical role in enabling REPs to optimize costs, enhance efficiency, and navigate the complexities of the developing power markets.
Three decades of innovation in energy and utilities with Frends
Frends brings over 30 years of dedicated expertise to the Energy & Utilities industry, with a deep-rooted history of providing targeted solutions. At the heart of our platform is a mission to serve the energy sector, which began with its initial development to connect every gas station in Finland. This foundational project enabled seamless data exchange between the stations and a central IBM Mainframe, setting the stage for decades of industry-specific innovation and support.
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With Frends iPaaS you gain
75%
faster integration development with low-code environments
30%
faster connection to Business APIs with global standards
+600
Frends Connectors and prepackaged process templates (PiPs) specifically designed for the energy sector
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St1 selected Frends to unify and simplify its API architecture. With the new simplified API solution St1 was also able to reduce the number of unwanted network traffic by 50%.
Eltel Networks uses Frends to streamline IT across 7 countries, enhancing customer onboarding, cost efficiency, and IT satisfaction with over 1.5 million monthly work orders.
Sandviken Energi has effectively utilized Frends iPaaS, significantly enhancing their operations by making their new process 179 times faster than before.
Caruna adopted Frends to enhance operational efficiency and improve B2C online services. With Frends, Carina reduces deployment time and streamlines data management.
Gartner Attribution and Disclaimers:
Gartner, Strategic Roadmap for Intelligent Renewable Energy Operations
04 Dec 2023 | By: Nicole Foust, Lauren Wheatley. GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.