Reshaping the power industry with cloud-based solutions
Posted: April 15, 2025
It’s not magic. When you flick the wall switch, there are many very real processes and people hard at work, making sure your lights turn on.
There are the power generation companies that generate the electricity, the transmission system operator that transports that electricity via high-voltage lines, and there’s the retail providers or local utilities that send the electricity on the final leg of its journey to your wall socket. Within these larger segments of the power supply chain, there are a number of other facilitators at work too—power schedulers and purchasers, independent system operators and regional transmission organizations load-serving entities, and others—all doing their part to ensure the lights stay on.
Although, in a broad sense, they all have a shared goal, they have each their own specific objectives, worries, and their own limitations of big-picture awareness. This leads to information silos, barriers to collaboration, and gaps in one of our most essential supply chains.
Why more renewable energy means a more complex grid
Minus the odd rolling blackout, we’ve gotten along all right so far; so, why are silos in the supply chain a problem all a sudden? A large part of the conundrum comes down to renewable energy.
Today, low-carbon energy makes up about 32% of the global power generation. By 2050, experts expect it to rise to 65-80%.[1] The vast majority of that projected increase owes directly to solar and wind energy. The deeper these renewable energies penetrate the energy mixture, the more complex the task of maintaining grid reliability. If that sounds counterintuitive, consider the intermittent nature of solar energy or wind energy. The sun doesn’t always shine. The wind doesn’t always blow. The larger the piece of the energy pie that these intermittent energies account for, the more variable the pie overall. To be sure, more renewable energy in the mix is good for the shared future of our planet, but, if you’re a power grid, renewable energy is another name for added complexity.
While staying to one’s lane worked well enough for the power ecosystem in the past, siloed decision-making is increasingly insufficient to the complexities of today’s grid. Real solutions require multi-organization collaboration in real time.[2] That’s just what cloud-based data-sharing is good for.
What does a digitally connected power ecosystem look like?
When the key players of the power supply chain can each access the data they need, and share the data other players need to access, what you get is a more flexible, resilient power grid that can better adapt to disruption, optimize resources, and improve efficiency in real time.
That might look like, for example:
- A transmission system operator and a distribution operator, exchanging real-time generation, fluctuation, and grid condition data to improve coordination.
- A large industrial consumer sharing real-time demand data with utilities to improve demand forecasting.
- Energy suppliers empowered with the real-time demand and supply data they need to price electricity dynamically and reduce pricing volatility.
- Utilities with an enhanced ability to monitor grid congestion in real time, enabling them to preemptively reroute flows before bottlenecks occur and support grid flexibility.
In short, precisely what a cloud-empowered power ecosystem looks like depends on which supply chain partner’s perspective you take, and the market in which they operate. Already, pioneering companies in both regulated and deregulated electricity markets are using cloud-based data-sharing solutions to thrive in the evolving service landscape.
Let’s take a look at a couple real-world examples of connected power supply chains.
Deregulated energy markets: Breaking down silos in multi-organization enterprises
In deregulated markets, like ERCOT in Texas, PJM in the Mid-Atlantic and parts of the Midwest, or CAISO in California, the stages and functions of the power supply chain are generally managed each by distinct entities. Consequently, the divisions between supply chain members are starker here than those found in regulated markets.
Forward-thinking power companies in deregulated electricity markets are already closing the gaps in the supply chain with cloud-based solutions. ZGlobal, for instance, a power scheduler operating in CAISO’s territory, turned its network of partners into a data-sharing community by adopting a common, cloud-based data-sharing platform.
The solution empowers all the community members with near real-time data access and granular security configuration. Everybody wins: ZGlobal can easily create daily heterogeneous reports to provide customers with a full picture of how their assets are performing; Silicon Valley Clean Energy, the power purchaser, enjoys a simplified, more sophisticated process of settling and validating invoices every month; and like the other members of this data-sharing community, the power producer can now share and access essential data with greater ease, speed, transparency, and security.
Regulated markets: Breaking down intra-organizational silos
In regulated electricity markets, the functions of the power supply chain are typically handled by a single, vertically integrated utility, but these utilities have information silo problems of their own. Historically, many have understood their organizations as composites of three distinct businesses: generation, transmission, and distribution.
Dominion Energy—a vertically integrated utility that serves communities across Virginia and parts of the Carolinas—found itself in just this situation. “Frankly, our problems don’t care about these divisions,” says Jaime De La Ree, Supervisor of Engineering Analytics & Modeling at Dominion. “As the complexity of the problem grows, we can’t continue to operate with the assumption that these are separate parts of the business.” To bring the parts of its business together, Dominion built an integrated cloud-based asset management and analytics system.
Dominion Energy's new solution integrates data from multiple systems across its sprawling operations, including SCADA, energy management, and geospatial data, into a cloud-enabled, unified asset framework. This model automates data maintenance, offers real-time monitoring, and enables proactive issue detection, improving decision-making and system reliability. By securely sharing data via the cloud, Dominion can quickly scale its operations and deliver real-time insights, such as environmental data and performance metrics, boosting operational efficiency and customer engagement. The system’s flexibility has already enhanced maintenance processes and reduced implementation time for new use cases.
From silos to solutions: Collaboration is key to grid reliability
As with all our thorniest challenges, lasting solutions require broad and strategic collaboration. By breaking down data silos and enabling real-time insights, the power industry can move beyond reactive problem-solving toward proactive, integrated operations. This shift toward a more collaborative, digitally connected power ecosystem isn’t just about keeping the lights on today, it’s about ensuring a more sustainable, reliable, and efficient energy future for the decades to come.
[1] McKinsey & Company. (2024, September 17). Global energy perspective 2024. McKinsey & Company. https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/energy-and-materials/our-insights/global-energy-perspective
[2] Deloitte. (n.d.). Overcoming grid congestion: A new approach to modernizing the grid. Deloitte. Retrieved February 12, 2025, from https://www.deloitte.com/nl/en/Industries/energy/perspectives/overcoming-grid-congestion.html
