SEACON 2022: The next level pipelines delivering Net Zero

Benedict Dodd, Co-Founder at Armakuni and Peter Stuart, Technical Director at RES delivered this talk at SEACON 2022

Net Zero is not a nice to have and the clock is ticking. As the global community looks to reorganise to tackle the most important and urgent issue humanity may ever face, it’s obvious that clean energy production is at the core of the solution.

Peter Stuart has spent the last 18 months building elite teams with RES, the world’s largest independent renewable energy company, implementing the next generation of pipelines delivering the next generation of energy supply.

Whilst this talk gives an interesting insight into how the digital revolution is enabling renewable energy, it also gives insight into the organising teams for fast flow, infrastructure, code, data, analytics and ML pipelines that connect, for example, the climatic analysis to the hardware harvesting energy in the North Sea to the IoT cloud platforms and the operational analysis tools ensure every last drop of energy is collected.

This is also a story with scalability at its heart and how every lesson the DevOps community has learned is going to be needed to meet the exponential growth the world needs to realise in our journey to sustainable, renewable energy.

Transcript

1. The next level pipelines delivering Net Zero Peter Stuart & Ben Dodd
2. Time to meet our villain! B
3. The Clock is Ticking Source: https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15 - Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
4. Source: https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/maps/ We’ve always had heatwaves B
5. Source: https://showyourstripes.info/s/globe / UK Met Office / University of Reading / 1850-2021 B
6. Sign of the Times Source: Peter & Family
7. It’ll get used up anyway…THEN we can switch Source: https://informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/how-many-gigatons-of-co2/ B
8. Energy Stability & Cost Source: https://www.reuters.com &
9. Where are these greenhouse gasses coming from? B Source: European Environment Agency (EEA)
10. SOLAR • We need to scale rapidly • Little room for failure
11. Who are you? Ben Dodd • Founder at Armakuni • Quite Tall • I used to do bad jokes • I had 3 children • Now I do dad jokes • I get to work with interesting companies doing difficult things B
12. ⚠ ⚠ ⚠ ⚠ Renewable Dad Joke Alert B
13. What do wind turbines think of renewable energy? They’re a big fan! B
14. Who are you? Peter Stuart • Technical Director @ RES • Not as tall as Ben • Passionate about using technology to scale up renewable energy • Father of Twins
15. CONSTRUCTION RES Overview 16 23 GW 40 10 GW 2,500+ PROJECT PORTFOLIO YEARS OF EXPERIENCE EMPLOYEES DEVELOPMENT SUPPORT SERVICES WIND SOLAR STORAGE TRANSMISSION & DISTRIBUTION TECHNOLOGIES ACTIVITIES OF OPERATIONAL ASSETS SUPPORTED GREEN HYDROGEN H 2
16. By 2030, 50% of the world’s power will come from renewable energy Source: https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/oil-and-gas/our-insights/global-energy-perspective-2022
17. More projects to manage More complex projects Innovating to remain market leaders → Investing in technology & our people! Challenges
18. What’s on the Menu?
19. We build pipes for fast flow! B
20. The pipeline of work & alignment
21. Before Team
22. After Get the basics right… …then add value (energy) …and make it visible to our customers 1 Control Insights Analytics Data Integration Data Acquisition 2 3
23. Learnings • It’s been challenging! • There are many different ways to split the monolith • Smaller products give us the agility to build faster and better • Building quality into the software is key • Important to make time to share knowledge between teams and developing a culture of learning
24. Control Data Acquisition Platform Flow Aligned UNO Data Integration As a service Analytics / Insight Enabling Complex Subsystem B
25. B Dunbar’s Number Team API Independent Service Heuristics Conway’s Law Product Mindset Service Management Mindset User Needs Mapping Cybernetics Clear boundaries Team Cognitive Load Generative Organisation Common goal Wardley Maps Dynamic Reteaming Psychological Safety Domain-Driven Design Fractal Planes Technical Excellence Super strong foundations that keep your team topologies-led, sensing organisation standing for many years!
26. B Source: https://teamtopologies.com/infographics The end state: Sensing capability responding at pace, not an org chart
27. SOLAR • Align your teams for flow • Lower cognitive overhead • Use the data pyramid
28. ⚠ ⚠ ⚠ ⚠ Renewable Dad Joke Alert B
29. A surge of electricity walks into a bar. The barman says: “why the long phase?” B
30. The pipeline of data
31. The journey of data
32. Excitement, Opportunity & Cross-Functional Teams
33. Azure IoT Edge: Continuous Delivery The journey of data B
34. T&D • Everyone loves a gearbox • Even physical, tricky systems can use continuous delivery • Bi-directional fast flow of code and data is an opportunity for the flow of new products
35. One more joke…
36. ⚠ ⚠ ⚠ ⚠ Ultimate Dad Joke Alert B
37. Son: "Dad, can you tell me what a solar eclipse is? Dad: "No sun." B
38. Conclusion
39. What I hope you have learned • Organise your people for low cognitive load and flow • More importantly, listen for when to change • Even tricky environments can use CD • Feedback early and often for all the pipelines
40. Bringing Creativity & Joy To The World of Engineering. • “...a future you can look forward to and not feel sad about…” • Working towards an inspiring vision AND working more like this The prize: B
41. A future where everyone has access to affordable zero-carbon energy The prize:
42. Claire Puttock claire.puttock@res-group.com Thank you! 👈 Feedback & Links