The three-day summit sponsored by the ESB got underway yesterday and will finish tomorrow, Thursday 5 June but until then, this International Technology Innovation Summit is providing an opportunity for chief technology officers from across the world to exchange information on the opportunities for technology to shape the future of how we produce and consume electricity.

This will be the third event of its kind with this year’s theme being “The Integrated grid: Realising the full value of central and distributed energy resources.”

As the electricity network has evolved by leveraging generation plants interconnected by transmission grids and feeding distribution networks that supply power to customers.

The focus will be on how the distribution of energy from sources is changing rapidly with the rise of distributed energy resources (DER) such as small natural gas-fuelled generators, combined heat and power plants, electricity storage, and solar photovoltaics (PV) connected to the distribution system.

Building a road map for the future

It is then hoped that this information will help those participating in the summit to develop roadmaps for their own technology development as well as to inform the most critical stakeholders on the policies that will be needed to go hand in hand with technology adoption for a more energy sustainable future.

On the world stage, despite some ups and downs, Ireland is establishing itself as one of the most promising markets for wind energy production going by a global study of utilities, carried out in 2010, which ranked Ireland as having the third-most advanced smart network in the world.

The final day of the summit in the Science Gallery, Dublin will feature a dialogue with senior European and US executives of some of the largest multinationals that have their European headquarters based in Ireland, on their perspective on the energy industry into the future in terms of convergence in the power and ICT industries.