Market Perspectives

ISG Research is happy to share insights gleaned from our latest Buyers Guide, an assessment of how well software providers’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements. The Power and Utilities Grid Management: ISG Research Buyers Guide is the distillation of a year of market and product research by ISG Research.

The global population is projected to reach 9.7 billion by 2050, from 8 billion in 2023, fueling efforts to meet growing energy needs. The demand for all types of energy sources—including traditional fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas, along with nuclear and renewable sources like solar, wind and hydropower—has introduced a spectrum of innovative energy-delivery technology that must be continuously operated and governed. Now intertwined with governments, the public and the private sector, these systems require physical and digital protection to ensure the continuity of power and utilities everywhere on the planet.

Global trends are changing how regions and countries transform energy infrastructure. Impacts include the steadily increasing demand for renewable energy and sustainability, government regulations, the development of smart cities, geopolitical situations and fossil fuel prices. The decarbonization and clean energy transition is driven by significant legislative support and investments to reduce emissions while maintaining market prices that support consumer and business economics.

This requires the power and utilities industry to keep pace with functional needs, such as:

• Focusing on grid transformation. For reliability and flexibility, especially in the face of increasing weather and climate-related challenges, advanced delivery mechanisms such as virtual power plants and microgrids are essential for supporting cleaner and more reliable energy sources.
• Managing supply chain resilience. Accessibility of critical components such as steel, aluminum and transformers is key to minimizing disruptions, developing domestic supply chains and reducing dependency on foreign materials.
• Incorporating clean and renewable energy sources. These energies are growing in utilization, creating new demand for technologies to support them and the intertwining of operations with traditional sources.
• Keeping pace with technology. Artificial intelligence and smart infrastructure with meters and grids play a significant role in the integration of centralized and alternative energy sources to ensure flexibility in meeting supply and demand.

The power and utilities industry is in a state of flux, with demand for electricity on the rise. Driven by economic growth and electrification trends, the path forward is peppered with challenges and opportunities. The clean energy transition is a major driver of renewables, particularly solar and wind, and is projected to surpass coal as the leading source of global electricity generation.

The grid, however, is struggling to keep pace with the changing energy landscape. Aging infrastructure, coupled with the integration of distributed energy resources like rooftop solar, presents reliability concerns. Transformation efforts are underway but require significant capital investment, which is further complicated by rising interest rates and cycles of inflation that impact the cost of fuel and resulting prices. Regulatory frameworks pressure the balance between ensuring grid resilience and keeping energy affordable.

The power and utilities industry relies heavily on a vast network of infrastructure and equipment, including power plants, substations, transmission lines and distribution grids. The technology to support power and utilities is always in operation, but in some ways also inevitably in crisis. Ensuring consumer consumption across traditional power grids and equipment requires continuous support.

Central to the power grid is the generation, distribution and transmission of energy in one of the world’s most complex infrastructures. The grid requires connection and continuity and serves as the connective tissue of the energy ecosystem, ensuring that electricity is delivered where needed. Additionally, the grid ensures continuity by maintaining a steady, uninterrupted flow, even as supply and demand fluctuate. The increasing complexity of energy challenges, coupled with the aging infrastructure of the grid, makes this task more difficult than ever before.

The transformation of the grid requires advanced, interoperable software to support grid orchestration, enhance connectivity to the edges of the network and improve asset management. The current grid infrastructure cannot support the ongoing energy transition, particularly as the energy mix shifts toward renewable sources like wind and solar. Additionally, the rise of the "prosumer"—individual consumers who generate electricity, often through solar panels or electric vehicles—further complicates the system. These prosumers contribute to both the consumption and production of energy, transforming the once-passive role of consumers into a vital part of the grid. Through 2027, over two-thirds of the power and utilities industry will invest to substantially renovate grid technologies, ensuring continuity and diversity of energy sources.

Transforming the grid has challenges that vary by geographic region. Europe's reliance on energy imports—almost two-thirds—and the need to decarbonize have exposed gaps in grid capacity. The EU requires investments in renewable energy and grid connections to reach its 2050 carbon neutrality goals.

The aging U.S. power grid faces significant challenges as electric demand rises and clean energy transition accelerates. Outdated systems, compounded by climate change, are increasingly vulnerable to severe weather events, leading to declining grid reliability. Government investments and initiatives like the Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnerships Program will provide over $10 billion through 2026.

In Asia Pacific, economies face significant challenges in upgrading transmission grids to accommodate the expansion of renewable energy essential for meeting net-zero goals. Over the next decade, the region will invest more than $3 trillion in power generation, with 60% dedicated to renewables and storage. The transition to clean energy and integrating these resources, often far from existing grids, poses significant challenges, with bidirectional energy flows and distributed energy resources becoming more prevalent.

Utilities must overhaul the electricity grid to make it smarter, more resilient and more efficient. This requires current technologies such as sensors, automation and data analytics to improve reliability, integrate renewable energy sources and empower customers with greater control over their energy use. ISG Research defines grid management software as the platform and tools to operate efficiently and reliably, spanning management, operations, infrastructure, monitoring and acting upon issues. The software plays a vital role in today’s electrical grid, providing enhanced reliability, improving efficiency, integrating distributed energy resources, promoting sustainability and enabling well-informed decisions for optimization and cost savings.

This Buyers Guide report evaluates software providers offering grid management for power and utility enterprises. Key features include monitoring, control and optimization of the electrical grid functioning as a control center. The software should have advanced grid management functionalities, including fault location, isolation and service restoration; Volt/VAr optimization; outage management; and initial and enhanced generations of advanced metering infrastructure.

The ISG Buyers Guide™ for Power and Utilities Grid Management evaluates providers and products based on a capability framework to support advanced distribution management systems, distributed energy resources management, device support, outage management and user interface and experience management.

This research evaluates the following software providers that offer products to address key elements of power and utilities grid management as we define it: ABB, AspenTech, CGI, GE Vernova, Hitachi Energy, Landis+Gyr, Minsait, OATI, Oracle, Siemens, Schneider Electric and Uplight.

This research-based index evaluates the full business and information technology value of power and utilities grid management software offerings. We encourage you to learn more about our Buyers Guide and its effectiveness as a provider selection and RFI/RFP tool.

We urge organizations to do a thorough job of evaluating power and utilities grid management offerings in this Buyers Guide as both the results of our in-depth analysis of these software providers and as an evaluation methodology. The Buyers Guide can be used to evaluate existing suppliers, plus provides evaluation criteria for new projects. Using it can shorten the cycle time for an RFP and the definition of an RFI.

The Buyers Guide for Power and Utilities Grid Management in 2024 finds GE Vernova first on the list, followed by Schneider Electric and Siemens.

Software providers that rated in the top three of any category ﹘ including the product and customer experience dimensions ﹘ earn the designation of Leader.

The Leaders in Product Experience are:

• GE Vernova.
• Schneider Electric.
• Siemens.

The Leaders in Customer Experience are:

• GE Vernova.
• Oracle.
• Schneider Electric.

The Leaders across any of the seven categories are:

• GE Vernova, which has achieved this rating in seven of the seven categories.
• Schneider Electric in six categories.
• Siemens in three categories.
• Oracle in two categories.
• ABB, AspenTech and Hitachi Energy in one category.

The overall performance chart provides a visual representation of how providers rate across product and customer experience. Software providers with products scoring higher in a weighted rating of the five product experience categories place farther to the right. The combination of ratings for the two customer experience categories determines their placement on the vertical axis. As a result, providers that place closer to the upper-right are “exemplary” and rated higher than those closer to the lower-left and identified as providers of “merit.” Software providers that excelled at customer experience over product experience have an “assurance” rating, and those excelling instead in product experience have an “innovative” rating.

Note that close provider scores should not be taken to imply that the packages evaluated are functionally identical or equally well-suited for use by every enterprise or process. Although there is a high degree of commonality in how organizations handle power and utilities grid management, there are many idiosyncrasies and differences that can make one provider’s offering a better fit than another.

ISG Research has made every effort to encompass in this Buyers Guide the overall product and customer experience from our power and utilities grid management blueprint, which we believe reflects what a well-crafted RFP should contain. Even so, there may be additional areas that affect which software provider and products best fit an enterprise’s particular requirements. Therefore, while this research is complete as it stands, utilizing it in your own organizational context is critical to ensure that products deliver the highest level of support for your projects.

You can find more details on our community as well as on our expertise in the research for this Buyers Guide.