Smart energy systems are capable of transmitting and receiving real-time data and instructions. They open up new ways of optimizing energy efficiency, peak demand, appliances and costs. Over 100M smart meters and thermostats had been installed in the United States (including at c90M residences) and 250M have been installed in Europe by 2020.
The purpose of this data-file is to profile c40 companies commercializing opportunities in smart energy monitoring, smart metering and smart thermostats. The majority are privately owned, at the venture or growth stage. We also tabulate their patent filings.
We find most of the offerings will lower end energy demand (by an average of 7%), assist with smoothing grid-volatility, provide appliance-by-appliance demand disaggregations and encourage consumers to upgrade inefficient or potentially even defective appliances. Numbers are tabulated in the data-file to quantify each of these effects.
Further research. Our recent commentary that summarises the key points on Smart energy systems is linked here. Our outlook on the most conductive metals used in the energy transition is linked here.
This data-file screens for the technology leaders in fiber-optic cables, which are crucial for the digitization of industries and the world’s structural shift towards remote-working.
The file starts by tracking 37,000 patents filed into fiber optic cabling, where the pace of research has risen at a 14% CAGR since 2009, with 75% of 2019’s patents filed in China and 18% in the US.
The 2019 data are shown more granularly in the ‘2019’ tab, aggregating descriptions of 4,000 patents and the companies behind them.
From these patents, we identify and evaluate the largest listed companies in fiber-optics, including a helpful profile of each company, their revenues, and the percent of their revenues from fiber-optic cables.
This model presents the economic impacts of developing a typical, 625Mboe offshore gas condensate field using a fully subsea solution, compared against installing a new production facility.
Both projects are modelled out fully, to illstrate production profiles, per-barrel economics, capex metrics, NPVs, IRRs and sensitivity to oil and gas prices (e.g. breakevens).
The result of a fully offshore project is lower capex, lower opex, faster development and higher uptime, generating a c4% uplift in IRRs, a 50% uplift in NPV6 (below) and a 33% reduction in the project’s gas-breakeven price.
Please download the model to interrogate the numbers and input assumptions.
Production optimisation can uplift mature fields’ output by 5-20%, varying production rates, chokes, pump-rates and EOR strategies, well-by-well across a field. It’s another way to stave off decline rates. But how?
This data-file summarises the methodology employed by BP, based on the most detailed patent we have seen on the topic, in our screen of 3,000 patents across the industry. BP is a leader in this area. Having digitised most of its operated assets, production optimisation comes next.
The typical challenge across the industry, is that as many as 20-30 changes may be required to optimise a large field, which is time-intensive for engineers to perform manually, hard-to-prioritise, hard-to-sequence and prone to errors that might defy operational constraints on individual wells.
BP’s system iterates through potential changes, selects the most promising candidates, validates that they comply with operating constraints, and shifts production to an optimal state (chart above).
This data-file includes our summary of BP’s patent, schematics for its implementation, data behind our chart above and a ranking of BP’s “digital technology” versus other Majors that we have assessed.
This data-file summarises twenty recent papers using inflow control devices: an exciting digital technology to optimise horizontal wells by limiting production from zones that are susceptible to flowing water or gas.
To lower global decline-rates, adoption is increasingly widespread at horizontal wells around the conventional oil industry. Described operators include Aker-BP, CNOOC, Equinor, KOC, Lukoil, Mubadala, OMV, PetroChina, Rosneft, Aramco, Schlumberger, Suncor and pure-play Tendeka.
Each paper is categorized by company, by country, specific fields (if relevant), paper-type, focus, well-type, ICD-type, our assessed “impact” and a short summary.
Our “Top 10 facts” on ICDs are also summarised in the data-file…
We have modelled the economic uplift of extra digital instrumentation on a typical Permian well. If the data can uplift production by 2.5%, then c$0.4M of instrumentation costs would “pay back” (i.e., break even). If the data can uplift production by 10%, it would add +$1M of NPV and +5% IRR per well. These numbers are all shown at $50/bbl, but you can flex the inputs in our model.
