From Expertise to Consensus: Why the energy transition needs standards as much as it needs technology

Making electricity clean, reliable and available to all is the work now facing our industry, and it depends on two things: expertise, and agreement on how to use it. Expertise comes first.

Across the world, scientists, engineers, utilities, manufacturers, researchers and system operators are solving hard problems. New work is under way on offshore grids, renewable integration, energy storage and digitalization. Power electronics and network management are changing faster than in any previous decade of this industry.

Progress then slows at the point where the technology has to leave the laboratory or the pilot project. A converter design proven on one link cannot simply be repeated on the next if the two ends specify different testing, different protection settings and different communication interfaces.

To use this technical progress at scale, we need agreement. Without it, technologies stay fragmented, every project must be designed separately, supply chains never reach large-scale production, and interoperability turns into an obstacle.

The 21^st century energy transition will be defined by how much of this technical progress reaches grids, in how many countries, and how quickly.

This is where international standardization does its job. At the IEC, the International Electrotechnical Commission, experts from nearly 170 member countries turn expertise into consensus.

Reconnecting the energy ecosystem

Generation, transmission, distribution and consumption have long been treated as separate domains. Future energy systems do not allow that separation. Today almost nothing in a modern economy runs without electricity. Communications, transport, healthcare, manufacturing and digital services all depend on reliable electricity that does not fail.

The IEC works towards an all-electric and connected society: one where technology is safe and trusted, and where it serves every scale of need, from a first rural microgrid to a continent-wide smart grid.

This changes what standards have to cover. A standard for a single device is no longer enough on its own. The system around that device has to be specified as well. It is one thing to write a document about an innovative solution that has worked in one entity or one country. Making it the standard in nearly 170 countries is a completely different paradigm. This is the work of IEC. 

This is the reconnect. Electrification asks us to rejoin parts of the system that grew up separately, and it asks the organizations behind them to work far more closely together. Smart energy networks, sustainable transport, grid-interactive data centres and digitally connected infrastructure all depend on coordinated operation across several domains, which means the technologies have to work together. 

Standardization is moving from single devices towards whole systems. The newer areas of IEC work are system standardization, and standards that enable management of electrical networks. A hybrid interconnector is one example. It may join assets owned by different companies, working under different national rules, and managed from different control centres. 

Success depends on agreed interfaces, communication protocols, test methods and operating requirements. A data centre that supports the grid is another. Its power electronics, its building systems and the grid operator’s dispatch signal all have to understand each other, whether the site is in Osaka, in Nairobi or in Sao Paulo.

Consider what is actually shaping today’s electrical networks. Communications and data capabilities are embedded in almost every new asset. Operations are being transformed digitally. Battery storage is being placed in the grid itself. Islanded microgrids are used to reduce the risk of supply failure. Solar photovoltaic and wind generation are connected at every scale, from a single roof to a large farm. These are separate developments, with separate business cases and separate suppliers, and they have one thing in common. Each of them generates, stores or consumes in direct current.

The alternating current network will remain in place for decades to come. What has changed is that direct current is now present inside that network, first at the edges and increasingly closer to its centre. The two have to work together, in the same substation, on the same feeder, under the same protection scheme, and at the point of use. That interface is where agreement is now needed, and it is exactly the kind of question international standardization exists to answer.

IEC and CIGRE: two organizations, one mission

CIGRE, the International Council on Large Electric Systems, was created in 1921. The IEC was created in 1906. Both were started by the same generation of engineers, for the same reason. Electricity does not respect borders, and neither can the work of making it safe and reliable.

CIGRE brings the world’s power system specialists together. They debate, they test new ideas, and they share what has been learned, including what did not work. That is how our industry finds out what works technically, and it happens quickly.

The IEC turns what works into what everyone can use. Through its National Committees, which bring in industry, utilities, regulators, policy makers, consumers, academia and research bodies, a proven practice becomes a draft. A draft becomes a standard only when the member countries vote to accept it. The conformity assessment systems alongside those standards take it the final step: one test, one certificate, accepted in many markets.

CIGRE determines what works. The IEC makes it work everywhere.

Consensus takes time. What it produces, though, is worth the wait. Once every participating country has had the chance to contribute, to challenge and to vote, the resulting standard carries a legitimacy that no single market can give it. An idea developed by experts in one country becomes something that can be specified, purchased and trusted everywhere else. It does not have to be renegotiated country by country. It becomes a common language.

From expertise to global impact

Innovation without standardization struggles to reach scale. Standardization without innovation has nothing new to carry.

There is a larger purpose in this, and it is worth saying plainly. Hundreds of millions of people still live without electricity at home, and many more live with a supply that fails several times a week. Every hour of expertise contributed through CIGRE, and every vote cast in an IEC committee, moves the world a small distance towards electricity that is safe, clean and available to all. IEC standards are used by roughly 99% of humanity. That reach turns a good idea in one laboratory into a working system across the world. 

As experts, you already know what works. Standardization is how you make it work everywhere. The route in is your National Committee. The next generation of experts should be part of the IEC standards writing process, because in the 21^st century, today's innovations and standards affect every aspect of human life. 

From expertise to consensus, and from consensus to implementation: the standards we agree on this year will still be carrying power when the people who wrote them are no longer here. That is the all-electric, connected and sustainable society.