DigiPoll@Energy

Digitalization and Industry 4.0 have a far-reaching impact on the energy sector. For stakeholders of all generation technologies, new opportunities and chances to optimize processes, leverage efficiency potential, reduce costs, and exploit new business models arise on all steps of the value stream. One highly discussed example is the data-driven predictive maintenance, which is equally relevant for different generation assets such as wind energy turbines and thermal power plants.

At the same time, new challenges arise from the digitalization. New competitors enter the market, new skills are required, IT security becomes essential, regulatory uncertainties appear – to name some of the main challenges.

The objective of the VGB project DigiPoll@Energy is to identify best practices across generation technologies and value chain steps and thereby prepare the ground for joint research projects and actions. Thereby, the VGB aims to support its members to benefit from the opportunities of the digitalization while mitigating the risks of the challenges.

The VGB project DigiPoll@Energy conducts a poll to analyze the as-is as well as the to-be state of the digital transformation in the energy sector regarding the approach and the applications. Besides questions targeting the implementation approach as well as digital applications and their benefits, a digital maturity level assessment of the core processes is conducted.

Therefore, the resulting 5 DigiPoll@Energy guiding questions are:

• What is the digital maturity level of the core processes?
• Which digital applications are currently used/are planned?
• What is the expected benefit?
• What are the challenges, risks, and bottlenecks?
• How is the transformation approached?

The poll is directed to all VGB members. An email with an invitation to participate will be sent out in October 2019. After completion of the poll, selected members will be invited for deep-dive interviews to detail the given answers further.

The concluding report will be made available to all VGB members in July 2020.

The poll data will be stored on secure servers in Germany by VGB PowerTech e.V. and only be analyzed anonymously. The VGB project is supported scientifically by the Chair of Environmental Process Engineering and Plant Design (Prof. Görner) of the University Duisburg-Essen.

The project uses a 6-step maturity level model developed at the RWTH Aachen.