Power and Energy

 

According to the latest published research by Kaspersky about industrial cyber security, a wide majority of surveyed organizations have expressed concerns about OT (operational technology) security. However, only one-third of the survey respondents have deployed some degrees of OT security. Such findings have clearly revealed the vulnerability of utility-generating and mission critical organizations. Apparently, with such level of protection, any deliberate attack like DDoS would devastate a country’s supply of electricity, water, petroleum or gas. In short, the OT asset management remains a challenge for ICS (industrial control system) and SCADA owners and is apparently vulnerable.

Most of today’s SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) networks have replaced proprietary protocols with TCP/IP connections in order to reduce operational costs, improve interoperability and productivity, and accelerate deployment times for mission-critical infrastructures. In fact, such technological transformations have continued as owners and management of utility infrastructures demand higher degree of visibility, seamless remote management, and IT/OT convergence

Electrical mobility is expected to enjoy a continuous momentum, thanks to policies in countries with leading economic status implementing either incentives or restrictions. For instance, some countries would ban the use of fuel-consuming vehicles while others provide economical measures to encourage vehicle owners to make a replacement with EV (electric vehicles). Indeed, advanced countries and developing countries have the common objective to reach a zero/low – emission transportation. However, EV growth may be challenged by the concern of “range anxiety”, as some EV owners have the fear of insufficient range to reach their destinations. To counter this fear, there is an increasing number of EC charging stations and some of them offer fast-charging functions.

Cyber threats to critical infrastructures shall be taken more serious than ever, as the number of attack incidents has increased and penetrated nuclear plants, and then oil, gas and energy sectors. On the other hand, hydroelectric has remained as one of the most reliable renewable source of energy for the past years.

Every industry has its own challenges, but for wind farm operators, these challenges come supersized. The Energy industry is one that has been quick to capture the benefits brought about by digitization. In fact, CIOs reported that in 2019, their primary technology focus is on data analytics, including predictive analytics. Implementing IoT to collect and analyze data can improve the performance and effectiveness of individual wind turbines.

Cyber-Physical System (CPS) has emerged as the new paradigm converging the physical and cyber technologies, and has served as the cornerstone to realize IoT (Internet of Things) and IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things). Today, CPS has been embedded in critical infrastructures to converge computational domain and physical sensors and actuators to assure mission-critical application serviceability and performance. The embedded CPS allows precise and real-time interactions between computing devices and physical environments, and thus becomes a phenomenon in manufacturing, utility plants, chemical engineering, transportations and medical.

The concept of green architecture has been a widespread phenomenon to mitigate negative environmental impacts. Indeed, buildings are not just a shelter, but also come with diverse energy systems including lighting, HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning), and electrical systems such as elevators, parking facility and entrance security. The maintenance expenses can often exceed the expected budgets. Besides the financial concerns, residents may also demand transparency of the energy consumption data about the buildings they live in, particularly towards incidents such as room temperature discomfort, system failure, and energy waste.