C3 Energy’s James Connaughton Discusses the Positive Impact of the Latest IT Advancements as the Industry Continues its Digital Transformation
Redwood City‚ Calif.– September 29‚ 2015 – C3 Energy Executive Vice President James Connaughton was a featured speaker at an exclusive program hosted by The Economist‚ today in San Francisco. During “The Digital Energy Economy” program‚ Connaughton shared his perspectives on the megatrends shaping the future of energy‚ as the industry continues its digital transformation.
“As the power grid becomes increasingly smarter‚ it becomes a fully connected sensor network and unprecedented amounts of data are produced‚” Connaughton said. “By applying technology advancements in big data‚ analytics‚ cloud computing‚ and machine learning‚ these data are being integrated‚ processed‚ and analyzed in a manner to optimize power generation‚ transmission‚ distribution‚ and consumption. The potential efficiencies and improvements in safety‚ reliability‚ security‚ and cost efficiency across the energy value chain are staggering.”
Connaughton discussed how the same technology used by Twitter to process 800 million tweets per day and Netflix to stream billions of hours of video per month is being applied to the massive amounts of incoming data produced by the smart grid. He noted that‚ applied broadly‚ these technologies can result in a total system improvement of up to 25 percent and $55 billion in savings annually from a smarter‚ data-networked energy system‚ according to recent studies.
The Digital Energy Economy program focused on how information technology is transforming the business of power‚ with discussions on the global megatrends shaping the energy market‚ policy‚ and business priorities that must be considered‚ and what the energy industry may look like by 2030‚ as the energy and technology worlds converge and business models evolve. The program was led by Matthew Bishop‚ senior editor of The Economist and included a variety of high-level speakers‚ including Tim O’Reilly‚ founder of O’Reilly Media; Ravi Kailas‚ chairman of Mytrah Energy Limited; Alan Marcus‚ head of IT and Telecommunications Industries for the World Economic Forum; and Richard Sandor‚ chairman and CEO of Environmental Financial Products.
