Strategic Intelligence: The Internet of Things in Power

Strategic Intelligence: The Internet of Things in Power

Summary

The IoT will transform the power industry, with its impact greater than or at least equal to any of the 20 industries GlobalData covers. It will help tackle five key power industry challenges, including modernizing aging grids, accelerating the energy transition, improving productivity and efficiency, strengthening energy security, and enhancing workforce safety.These challenges are set against the backdrop of growing global energy demand fueled by socioeconomic development, electrification, and AI data center expansion.

The IoT market will surpass $1.8 trillion by 2028 > The Internet of Things (IoT) describes the use of connected sensors and actuators to control and monitor the environment, the things that move within it, and the people that act within it. GlobalData forecasts the global IoT market will reach $1.8 trillion in revenue by 2028. Enterprise IoT will account for 72% of market revenue by 2028, up from 70% in 2023, while the consumer segment will make up 28% in 2028, down from 30% in 2023.

IoT is a critical theme for the power industry > IoT will transform the power industry, with its impact greater than or at least equal to any of the 20 industries GlobalData covers. It will help tackle five key power industry challenges, including modernizing aging grids, accelerating the energy transition, improving productivity and efficiency, strengthening energy security, and enhancing workforce safety.

IoT forms the backbone of smart grids > The power industry’s aging infrastructure urgently needs modernizing to maximize efficiency, support widespread renewable energy integration, and handle shifting demand patterns, including increased grid load from electrification across transport and industrial sectors. IoT, along with 5G, will form the backbone of next-generation smart grids. Connected devices enable real-time monitoring, data-driven decision-making, and automated grid management, ensuring more resilient and adaptive power networks. Advanced analytics can process operational and environmental data collected by IoT sensors to identify inefficiencies, predict failures, and optimize operations. Widespread deployment of smart meters will help utilities identify and respond quickly to large-scale disruptions while allowing consumers to monitor and optimize energy use.

Investment in IoT-adjacent technologies is essential > Although this report focuses on IoT, it is important to recognize that four key technologies intersect with IoT: artificial intelligence (AI), connectivity, cloud computing, and cybersecurity. Power companies that fail to invest in these adjacent technologies will fall behind in the IoT theme across the power industry. Those that fall behind will lose their competitive edge and risk becoming obsolete as the industry shifts toward smarter, automated operations.

Cybersecurity warrants particular attention among IoT-adjacent technologies, with the weaponization of energy a serious and growing threat. As IoT-connected devices multiply, so do potential attack surfaces. Artificial Intelligence of Things (AIoT)-based cybersecurity software will be crucial for protecting connected critical energy infrastructure.

Key Highlights

• IoT-based predictive maintenance transforms power asset management by minimizing costly unplanned downtime. IoT sensors embedded in power infrastructure can continuously transmit live equipment data like temperature, vibration, and pressure levels for processing by machine learning algorithms to detect early signs of failure. These algorithms are trained on historical performance data and constantly improve as they ingest new inputs, enabling them to recognize subtle failure patterns and anomalies impossible to detect manually.
• IoT will be vital for integrating distributed energy resources (DERs) like rooftop solar panels, home batteries, and EVs into existing grids, transforming them into highly decentralized, two-way networks. IoT sensors embedded throughout distribution networks can provide visibility into real-time energy flows to and from these resources, enabling localized balancing of supply and demand as renewable penetration increases. IoT will facilitate vehicle-to-grid (V2G) services as EVs evolve into mobile energy storage units, managing bidirectional energy flows and optimizing charging schedules.
• The growing convergence of IoT devices and energy systems also introduces new vulnerabilities. IoT expands the attack surface across the power industry, particularly through unsecured endpoints, cloud dependencies, and third-party vendors. Smart grids are vulnerable to denial of service (DOS) attacks, phishing, malware spreading, eavesdropping, and traffic analysis, with DOS attacks being the most potentially damaging and frequent.

Scope

This report offers a comprehensive analysis of the internet of things in the power industry including -

• How the internet of things will help tackle five key power industry challenges
• Which internet of things technologies companies across the power industry value chain should invest in, explore, and ignore
• Leading adopters and specialist vendors of the internet of things in the power industry
• Case studies
• M&A and hiring trends
• A thematic scorecard ranking major power companies in the internet of things theme

Reasons to Buy

• GlobalData’s strategic intelligence ecosystem is a single, integrated global research platform that provides an easy-to-use framework for tracking all themes across all companies in all sectors.
• This report is essential reading for senior executives to understand how the power industry will be transformed by the internet of things, ensuring your company does not get left behind.

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