RESILIENT GRID: Technology such as smart meters and micro-grids can help the vulnerable U.S. electric grid weather extreme storms.
Image: Flickr/Christopher Schoenbohm
In the days leading up to Hurricane Sandy's destructive march on the East Coast, utilities warned customers to prepare for widespread outages and potentially extensive power failure. The question was not if the grid would fail, but to what extent.
The storm highlighted an already well-known problem: The U.S. power grid is vulnerable to extreme weather. As officials from New York to Venice, Italy, have acknowledged in recent weeks, climate change is likely to increase the prevalence of such weather. And according to analysts and outside groups working on the problem, there is no one-size-fits-all remedy that can insulate the ailing grid against an escalation of the elements.
The conversation over extreme weather and U.S. transmission infrastructure is evolving, due in no small part to extreme weather events like Sandy, last summer's "super derecho" and last year's Hurricane Irene. These events have tested the grid and revealed its weaknesses, but they have also yielded valuable lessons -- lessons that, if successfully implemented, could result in a better-equipped system able to weather the storms of the future.
Smart meters keep operators ahead of the storm
One such lesson has been the success of smart meters in anticipating and responding to large-scale weather events.
When scores of tornadoes spun across the Southeast in 2011, ripping through towns and leaving hundreds of thousands of Georgia Power and Southern Co. customers without electricity, the utilities relied on a widely installed network of smart meters to chart the storm's path, identify high-priority customers like hospitals and fire stations, and deploy response teams to the hardest-hit areas.
In addition to speeding the recovery, the meters saved the utilities time and money. As Ed Carlsen, manager of distribution power systems for Georgia Power, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 2011, "We were able to determine that hundreds of meters were actually on, so that saved us from rolling trucks out there."
Smart meters aid grid resiliency in three primary ways, according to Chris Eisenbrey, director of business information at the Edison Electric Institute (EEI).
First, they act as remote sensors, alerting utilities to outages immediately and eliminating the need for customers to call in to report problems. Second, by providing utilities with a virtual map of outages, they allow response teams to be more efficiently deployed to the areas where they are most needed.
And finally, they allow the grid to be predictive rather than simply reactive -- when a problem begins to occur, operators can shut down or reduce power to troubled sections of the grid, isolating issues before they can spread.
The final point is particularly important given the structure of the U.S. power grid, which some would call antiquated. In a storm or hurricane, the majority of outages occur not because of localized events such as falling tree limbs but due to the cascading impacts of a single outage spreading across a large swath of infrastructure.
"The grid is a radial system. It's like a tree: There are twigs, there are branches, there's a trunk," said John Cooper, a partner at the consulting firm NextWatt Solutions and co-author of the book "The Advanced Smart Grid." "Break a branch, and all the twigs on the branch are gone. Break the trunk, and the whole thing shuts down."
The trick, he said, is to arrest the problem before it can spread from branch to twig.
Smart meters aid in this effort by immediately identifying problem areas. Some utilities, such as Commonwealth Edison, have taken the effort a step further by installing "smart switches" throughout their grid capable of immediately rerouting power away from problems.
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15 Comments
Add CommentWhat is preventing all power companies to at least start implementing "smart meters"?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSimpler solution: BURY THE WIRES!!!
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Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOne of the problems was the wires were buried in the subway tunnels !!
The sollution is having subgrids like 1 block size that supply much of their own power plus heat making generation 85% eff instead of at best 50% eff.
Plus they could supply all needed power during peak and use the utility supply off peak to save both money.
A 1 block unit can convert garbage, plastics, solar. wind, cogen ands share heat or A/C at 50% of the cost of utility power all the time. And give jobs making the plastics, garbage into fuels and power.
Not only could they supply the blocks electric and heat but transport fuels too. But utilities will fight it tooth and nail as it takes their power away.
Expense. Smart Meters are absurdly expensive the moment, despite largely being electronics.
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Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJurgen where did you get your info from? I already have one which not only wasn't that expensive to the utility but much that rather small amountwas paid for by a gov program.
But the utility also gets great savings in labor, fuel because they just drive by instead of getting out and reading each meter. I expect they save enough in 1 yr to pay the extra cost and they are likely to last 20-30 yrs. Do the math.
And many other advantages help save the utilities manpower. They are well worth the rather small cost which is reflected in my billing charge not having to pay for the labor, etc saved.
Many people with "smart meters" are reporting significant INCREASES in their bills! Cha-ching.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWires hanging on poles will be susceptible to winds (and drunk drivers).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThose who want bury the wires better be ready for higher costs and longer times to get repairs done when the do happen. Do you want that?
By far less expensive is as I said above have a mirco grid like a 1 block grid then wires can be in conduits and if the gird goes down the micro grid doesn't as it has it's own generating it can ramp up.
That's how you make reliability. Plus you have an in house repair person on call so any problems get fixed right away.
Sadly so many posting here have little knowledge of the subjects.
I would be interested in a coherent explanation why local utilities, particularly Con Ed, have not done more of what the article lists. I am thoroughly puzzled by the arguments I have heard elsewhere that burying lines is prohibitively expensive. I would have thought that Sandy repair costs will be prohibitively expensive. In the suburbs north of New York City, I would guess that buried lines would have cut outages and time to return to power by some 50-70%, as many of the line outages were trees falling on elevated power lines. Similarly with smart meters and other smart grid approaches: days would have been saved in repair (and administration) if the utility company didn't have to rely on customer contacts to determine what was out and what remained out after some key and trunkline repairs. What I find most puzzling is that the Governor of New York wants the Federal Government to pay for upgrading to a "smart grid," apparently because Con Ed has not sought to develop and invest in this, even though it would have saved substantial expenses over recent years in storm-consequence repairs. A PS to Quinn: in a previous storm we did not lose power until two days later when a contract repair crew inadvertently knocked down a perfectly good pole with a transformer on it!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat is needed for US utilities is a combination of transparency (Con Ed does not even share its maps with local police and fire officials) and intelligent planning. In some places burying lines (as is done within some of the newer high-end developments of single-family homes) makes sense; in low-lying areas, perhaps other strategies such as tree-pruning and minimizing distance from end-user to high-ground trunk lines might help.
For the moment, however, the reverse of orderly is happening - a rush on private dwelling generators, without any overall plan.
I would have expected better from companies that carry on the T.A.Edison legacy for inovation and planning.
The utility companies are lying and the public is buying it! Climate change is not an excuse to "deploy" poorly designed and dangerous "smart" transmitting Digital Utility meters (DU meters).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is nothing environmental about DU meters.
DU meters were designed and manufactured with a radiation emissions problem. The utility companies are lying about the safety of the meters.
In addition to storms, the grid is also highly vulnerable to sabotage. For more information on vulnerabilities of the grid and the potentially catastrophic consequences resulting from sabotage to it, see: http://operationcircuitbreaker.wordpress.com/
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have read up a bit on this subject in a report in Oz, One thing that really sold me on the idea of smart metres was the fact that power plants are basically guessing what power we use at any moment. As such, they over-compensate by providing 100% power most of the time to cover their bases. With smart metres they will be able to see in real time what power is needed, and accordingly ramp down (or up) the output if demand lowers or jumps thus saving wasted power output! Which should translate to less burnouts of transformers & cheaper power bills. Why did they do this instead of the cableing, transformers first? Probably because it was the cheapest with the biggest return and quicker to implement. Seriously though.. losing 25% of your power in transmission is disgustingly inefficient. And being AC power you have to sync up all the power transmitted to differing phases and frequencies, if you want to "divert power" from one area to the next. These substations that sync up the different power grids lose energy in the process.. stupid! Honestly perhaps we should make the shift back to DC which would do away with the need for sync-up stations and the need for inverter boxes on every house with a solar system. Remember solar power is DC? And the storage problem, reminds me of a old Indian saying: "The best place to store you left-over food is in your neighbours stomach". Apply that to the Grid and we should connect all power grids across the world internationally together. We would never need storage as somewhere they would have too much wind or Solar and need a buyer. We can leave this bit to the free market to sort out the prices. Power loss you say? HVDC dude only loses 5% power every 1000km's thus making it economical to wire up the worlds grids. Might even stop a few wars being that we'd all become interdependent on each other.. Also would it kill you guys to switch to metric?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have read up a bit on this subject in a report in Oz, One thing that really sold me on the idea of smart metres was the fact that power plants are basically guessing what power we use at any moment. As such, they over-compensate by providing 100% power most of the time to cover their bases. With smart metres they will be able to see in real time what power is needed, and accordingly ramp down (or up) the output if demand lowers or jumps thus saving wasted power output! Which should translate to less burnouts of transformers & cheaper power bills. Why did they do this instead of the cableing, transformers first? Probably because it was the cheapest with the biggest return and quicker to implement. Seriously though.. losing 25% of your power in transmission is disgustingly inefficient. And being AC power you have to sync up all the power transmitted to differing phases and frequencies, if you want to "divert power" from one area to the next. These substations that sync up the different power grids lose energy in the process.. stupid! Honestly perhaps we should make the shift back to DC which would do away with the need for sync-up stations and the need for inverter boxes on every house with a solar system. Remember solar power is DC? And the storage problem, reminds me of a old Indian saying: "The best place to store you left-over food is in your neighbours stomach". Apply that to the Grid and we should connect all power grids across the world internationally together. We would never need storage as somewhere they would have too much wind or Solar and need a buyer. We can leave this bit to the free market to sort out the prices. Power loss you say? HVDC dude only loses 5% power every 1000km's thus making it economical to wire up the worlds grids. Might even stop a few wars being that we'd all become interdependent on each other.. Also would it kill you guys to switch to metric?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have read up a bit on this subject in a report in Oz, One thing that really sold me on the idea of smart metres was the fact that power plants are basically guessing what power we use at any moment. As such, they over-compensate by providing 100% power most of the time to cover their bases. With smart metres they will be able to see in real time what power is needed, and accordingly ramp down (or up) the output if demand lowers or jumps thus saving wasted power output! Which should translate to less burnouts of transformers & cheaper power bills. Why did they do this instead of the cableing, transformers first? Probably because it was the cheapest with the biggest return and quicker to implement. Seriously though.. losing 25% of your power in transmission is disgustingly inefficient. And being AC power you have to sync up all the power transmitted to differing phases and frequencies, if you want to "divert power" from one area to the next. These substations that sync up the different power grids lose energy in the process.. stupid! Honestly perhaps we should make the shift back to DC which would do away with the need for sync-up stations and the need for inverter boxes on every house with a solar system. Remember solar power is DC? And the storage problem, reminds me of a old Indian saying: "The best place to store you left-over food is in your neighbours stomach". Apply that to the Grid and we should connect all power grids across the world internationally together. We would never need storage as somewhere they would have too much wind or Solar and need a buyer. We can leave this bit to the free market to sort out the prices. Power loss you say? HVDC dude only loses 5% power every 1000km's thus making it economical to wire up the worlds grids. Might even stop a few wars being that we'd all become interdependent on each other.. Also would it kill you guys to switch to metric?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSorry, my comment wasn't coming up on the sight.. tried three times.. my bad
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thissite* ugh!
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