Philippe Monloubou was appointed the Chairman of the Management Board of Enedis, the major French Electricity Distribution System Operator (38,000 employees, 36 million customers), in January 2014.
He is also the first Vice President of Think Smartgrids, a French association which promotes French smart grids sector.
Before his current position at Enedis, he spent 10 years within EDF Sales and Marketing division where he prepared and managed the deregulation of the French electricity market. Previously, he held several senior management positions within EDF Group, up to EDF group Senior Vice President in charge of Sales and Marketing. Philippe Monloubou holds an Engineering degree from the Special School of Public Works (ESTP - 1977) and graduated from the Institute of Business Administration (IAE Rennes - 1980).
1. As France’s national grid operator, what are Enedis’ views on the energy system of the future?
The energy system of the future will be more diversified and complex, with even more participants and players, both on the supply and demand sides. Most importantly, with a significant proportion of customers being prosumers, the expectations of market participants for energy choices and services will be more demanding. At the same time, the various stakeholders will still need reliable physical energy flows, as well as secure data flows.
We already see in Europe the development of millions of Distributed Energy Resources (DER), mostly from wind and solar, involving hundreds of thousands of self-consumers. These are mainly connected to distribution grids that are operated by Distribution System Operators (DSOs) and are deploying smart meters on a massive scale. New energy technologies are also emerging, such as electric mobility and technological advances in storage solutions. A lot has been done, but we are only in the middle of an unprecedented energy transition journey.
We can imagine that these trends will lead to more hybridised energy systems, where centralised models with large production sources will be connected to transmission grids. Local systems will rely on millions of distributed energy resources that are connected to distribution grids.
What is certain is that the energy system will be much more digitalised than today – it will have to be in order to manage increasing complexity.
2. How are digital technologies, like smart metering and drones, transforming the utilities industry?
Digital technologies present both challenges and opportunities.
The implementation of smart grid solutions that are aided by digital technologies facilitates faster integration of DER production units from renewable sources such as wind and solar. Smart metering systems allow customers to better control their energy consumption and suppliers to design and market more personalised offers. Additionally, smart metering systems enable municipalities to develop smart public lightning management systems and public electric vehicle smart charging terminals. Smart metering systems also give DSOs better control over motor vehicle and low voltage networks, allowing them to pilot local systems. Drones can provide a cost-effective way to improve preventive maintenance or incident tracking on aerial lines, especially in difficult-to-access sites.
One challenge for our industry lies in data management and cybersecurity. For example, managing 35 million smart meters at Enedis means to collect, store, secure, and process three billion points of data every day, before making them available on data platforms shared with other market participants. Such activities require a large, robust, adaptive, and secure IT Infrastructure, as well as new skills like data science.
Another challenge is that digitalisation impacts nearly all business processes. It requires a full transformation of the company and talent management.
3. What is your outlook on energy decentralisation, given the advances in micro-grids and renewable generation?
Energy decentralisation is already ongoing. I believe that further decentralisation is to come for several reasons.
One reason is technology. Photovoltaic panels are becoming increasingly more affordable and more efficient, while storage technologies and solutions hold great breakthrough potential. Additionally, grid operators are accumulating experience and skills to operate local systems and micro-grids, in addition to their proven historical ability to operate larger systems.
A second factor is the potential for the evolution of economic signals, such as carbon dioxide emission prices, energy taxation, and market regulatory models. Of course, any evolution requires consultation with all stakeholders.
Another fundamental aspect is social acceptance. Ultimately, citizens committed to the development of a carbon-neutral economy will dictate where, when, how, and from which source they want to consume or produce energy – and at what price.
4. What are the types of investments needed to build a future-ready power grid?
Investments into innovations and partnerships are key to building a future-ready power grid.
At Enedis, we take an incremental industrial approach. We start from pure R&D activities combined with open innovation with start-ups, then build up to local experimentation in brick-and-mortar smart grid demonstrator projects that are developed together with a great number of partners. Our partners include other utilities and power device manufacturers, universities, and research centres.
Such an approach allows us to study a great range of use cases, share the costs and return on experience with all partners on any given project, and ultimately reduce the time needed to access innovations that can be further industrialised to meet market expectations.
Besides our domestic projects in France which allowed us to start the industrialisation of smart grid solutions, Enedis and several members of our French Think Smartgrids association have established a partnership with Nanyang Technological University to experiment and test a micro-grid renewables project here in Singapore.
5. What are your thoughts on the SIEW 2018 theme “Transforming Energy: Invest, Innovate, Integrate”?
Our industry, which is committed to the energy transition and digital revolution, is undergoing unprecedented changes and challenges. Such transformation requires massive investments to develop more flexible power grids and IT infrastructure in order to manage the associated data in an increasingly complex energy system. We still have a lot of work to do to design new business models and market and regulatory mechanisms and develop relevant economic signals to be able to attract investors in the long term.
It is always a pleasure for me to come back every year to SIEW and meet and interact with other leaders of our industry to discuss our common challenges.