Sustainability Insights For Electric Power Sector Transformation

The book provides perspectives on the infrastructural and human capacity imperatives in the emerging electric power centric utility services. These insights will help to leapfrog underperforming sectors towards operational excellence in bundled utility services for customer loyalty and global sustainability. The book links the electric power sector with the interplay of people, planet, prosperity, peace, and partnerships (5Ps) – the essence of global sustainable development. A critical review of the electric power sector also known as the electric utility industry is provided. Using the Nigerian situation as an example, the book pivots from the present situation to consider the past and the potential future of sustainability centric transformation in the sector. The author's insights are based on what he saw, participated in, and contributed to both in the Nigerian and USA corporate, public, and academic spaces. The book will help readers to understand, appreciate and adopt appropriate processes, products, prices, communications, care, support, and services in the emerging power sector. In this transforming industry the demarcation lines between retail electricity production, storage and delivery is blurring. The traditional lines between service providers and users is becoming more complicated as consumers of electricity are also producing electricity in what is considered "Prosumers". The book is a reference for the electric power sector stakeholders, a basic text for students and a general reading for both energy industry and sustainability practitioners. Using Nigeria as a metaphor for developing nations with poor electricity supply, the author advocates business and public policies that will ensure the leapfrogging of service delivery for enhanced quality of life. He advocates leadership and structural evolution of the sector towards decentralization, digitalization and decarbonization (3Ds).

This book presents the electric power sector as the combination of Alternating Current (AC) and Direct Current (DC) systems into an infrastructural value chain managed by a value constellation of stakeholders. The demand for global sustainability and emerging technological convergences are synergizing to transform the sector towards decarbonization enabled by digitalization and decentralization. Sustainability insights on the simultaneously evolutionary and revolutionary processes that are helping the electric power sector to improve is provided by using Nigeria as a metaphor of underperformance. Effective application of these insights will encourage a leapfrog into transformational service provisioning for customers and the public in general. Presently across the globe (in most modern societies), AC and DC generation and utilization/consumption of electricity occurs as large-scale integrated systems - known as the electric power infrastructure or grid. Such large-scale grid infrastructure requires certain competencies to develop, implement and manage effectively. With new technologies and the increasing demand for sustainability, this mostly centralized grid approach is transitioning from the existing to an emerging architecture. Both the existing and the emerging grid architecture require core competency and human development. The electric power sector provides services from the local to global (villages, communities, localities, state/provinces, regions, nations and internationally) as an infrastructural value chain/constellation. With appropriate leadership, these infrastructural value chain and constellation of stakeholder ensure customer satisfaction while enabling social sustainability, technological sustainability and environmental sustainability. Technology convergence is driving the transformation of the sector. The two domains that determine the success of functional electric power sectors are covered in the book. These are the infrastructural value chain and utility services competencies. Contemporarily, both domains are being transformed by synergistic impacts of technological convergence and the emerging hierarchical grid architecture. The book summarizes these changes as four groups of concentric hexagons – grid architecture, infrastructure, technological convergence and core competencies. The first which is Hexagon of Grid Architecture includes Giga, Mega, National, Macro, Micro and Pico/Nano grids. Critical sub-systems in the sector are covered as the second Hexagon of Infrastructure including prime resources, generation/storage, deliver ((transmission/ distribution), utilization/consumption, revenue collection and customer care. The third is Hexagon of Technological Convergences which include distributed energy resources (DER)/smart grids, re-electrification of transportation, internet of things (IoT), distributed ledger technology (DLT)/blockchain and digitally enabled sustainable development (DESD). Hexagon of Core Competencies is the fourth in the group and the most important aspect of the electric power sector. It has to do with people – human capital in critical areas including public policy, corporate governance, strategic management, engineering, design/construction, supply chain/procurements, stakeholders' relationships management, finance, accounting/administration and operations, scheduling/maintenance.

Dr. Victor Udo is a transformational energy, sustainability and environmental, social & governance (ESG) executive with engineering, public policy and corporate governance acumen. He has over 20 years' experience of championing deployment of innovative processes and investments. Dr. Udo has implemented strategies that resulted in cost savings and increased revenue generation, while enhancing ESG impact along with diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies. His electric utility and sustainability strategies include renewable energy, storage, electrification of transportation, decarbonization, decentralization and digitalization of assets with IoT, Blockchain and AI. He is currently the Director of Sustainability at Bucknell University, Lewisburg Pennsylvania where he Chairs the President's Sustainability Council (PSC) consisting of the President, Provost, CFO, senior faculty, students, and staff. He provides leadership of the PSC to oversee a simultaneous planning and implementation process for the environmental sustainability objectives in the university strategic plan under four cross-disciplinary working groups: Zero Waste, Carbon Neutrality, Ecological Conservation/ Restoration, and Socially Responsible Investing. Dr. Udo currently work with students, faculty, and staff on ESG and DEI impact investments for innovative sustainability results including budget-neutral carbon neutrality and waste minimization and ecological improvements including tree planting. Dr. Udo is a former CEO with international sustainability and utility processes leadership in academia, state and local governments and Fortune 500 corporate energy companies. He has significant experience in identifying, analyzing, and incorporating global energy, economic, environmental, and educational trends into both public and private sector governance and infrastructure management. He is passionate about the convergence of renewable energy resources and storage, electrification of transportation. Dr. Udo was appointed by eventual Senator Chris Coons to a Planning Board in Delaware and by the New Jersey Governor to the Renewable Energy Task Force as well as assisting Governments in Africa. He obtained his Ph.D. in Urban Affairs and Public Policy from the University of Delaware. He has a Master's degree in Energy and Environmental Policy from the University of Pennsylvania along with Masters and BSEE from Howard University. Dr. Udo is an author with several publications on global, national, and local sustainable development, governance and infrastructure management.