SMARTER GRID: The grid of the future will have to deal with less predictable sources of electricity, such as the solar panels pictured here. Given that the amount of electricity generated at any particular moment must closely match the amount of electricity used at any given moment, coping with such variable sources may be the true test of the grid's smarts.
Image: Courtesy of Consolidated Edison Company
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What most people care about when it comes to the electrical outlet is that the current flows. "The only thing that matters is: when you walk in your house here or California or Colorado and turn on the light switch, does your house light up or doesn't it?" noted Senator Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia during an event to unveil the world's first carbon capture and storage project at a working coal-fired power plant last October.
But keeping those lights on amid ever increasing demand and the rise of wind, solar and other alternative sources of electricity generation that are inherently intermittent is just one of the goals of a smart grid. It will also have great value to utility companies by cutting expenses and improving reliability.
At the very least, the smart grid may finally allow utility companies to know when the power is out—without receiving a phone call. After all, as Constellation Energy CEO Mayo Shattuck admitted at a smart grid event in October: "We still rely on people to call in and then figure out what to fix."
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10 Comments
Add CommentThis is the smart grid? This story presented via the utility companies reads like a company ad campaign to convience everyone that Utopia in on the horizon; if only you believe. In the smart grid of the future, unlike the dumb grid of the present, electricity would flow the the mighty Mississippi; unhindered by techno gliches and angry cosumers brandishing picks and burning CEO's in effergy. The starting point of the Smart Grid of Oz is the mighty turbine, like its great-grand father the mighty Steam Engine and the Water Wheel, but has improved with age and has had a face lift in order to inprove its spin. In the Smart Grid of the future, there is no need to talk of photovaltics, wind energy, thermal, or any other such electricial production, that would make it the Enstien Grid; to smart for its own good. The Smart grid seems to boil down to how the system monitors the flow of electricity, although there have been transformers that exploded in various parts of New York, includeing 42nd street near Grand Central Station leaving a hole large enough to swollow several cars and a truck. Maybe the smart grid would have a self destruct monitor to prewarn of exploding transformeers, and would, also, include evacuation planes in case one blows up? When all of the smart monitoring that the smart grid is supposed to oversee gets to its prespective destination, the majority of buildings in the city are old and outdated and in need of upgradeing; who is going to monitor the electricial useage on site after it gets past the modern smart meters? Updated smart meters and old wiring.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSmart + dumb= dumb. So, when will we have the insight to create a Smart Grid. Remember! From sharp minds comes sharp products, so how sharp are the creaters of the Smart Grid? Are they the sharpest tools in the shed?
Just somequestions.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow does transformers work with direct current?
How can you reduce 750,000 Volts (DC) to the usual 230 Volts for house appliances (DC or AC)?
Im winter when there is almost no solar photovoltaic power, or when there is no wind, how will the "smart grid" supply the same amount of electric power?
Am I missing something here. This just looks like a description of how power gets from a generator to the consumer with some bloke sitting in the middle deciding when to put more capacity online. It's hardly smart, here in the UK they guage power usage by looking at TV listings and advert breaks and that seems to work fine.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFor a better descrtiption of smart grids we need to know how a network will morph from it's current setup where it has a small number of large capacity power stations to one with lots of smaller generating units (wind, tidal, soler etc) and how we handle issues like power factor losses
There is reference to converting transmission to DC, yet all components in the presentation are AC based including the generation itself. To accommodate DC transmission would appear to require almost complete replacement of existing technology. Are we being practical here? This is kind of like buying a $200,000 electric car to save $10,000 over the life of the car. Like it or not, we live in a world that is budget driven and that is a problem that must be solved concurrently.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAC to DC conversion is done by invertors and has benefits for very long distance power transmission (eg transmitting power across Russia causes a problem with AC at 50 cycles and a lines about 1,000 miles long since you are in effect building a quarter wavelength radio transmission aerial which radiates the power into space). It's also useful undersea since you don't get such high peak voltages.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe smart grid makes sense to me. Why would we want to continue being so wasteful?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI would like very much to insist on the the use of individual monitoring in each home,condo, apartment, hotel/resort room and charge the occoupant accordingly. The logistics of this are mind boggling but a start must be made.
In our city of Oshawa, Ontario we have chips installed in our thermostats with radio control to and from a central station. On particularly hot days with lots of AC usage, the utility can temporarily shut down your AC for 10-15 minutes to even out the demand on the grid and prevent spikes in the grid.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow well it works I don't know.
There is no way on Earth all this Hype on the Not-so-Smart Grid is justified, except as another bait-and-switch SCAM to misdirect efforts, capital and expertise away from Real Solutions.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI expect the pseudo-Greenies of the Al Gore persuasion, look forward to another opportunity to skim billions off of Electricity Sales by using Market Pricing to gouge more cash out of the already impoverished lower & middle class. Al Gore having already made a cool $billion for himself on Renewable Energy Subsidies and Carbon Trading. To get a good look of what is to come, read this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis
The really big profiteering will occur with Wind Energy, when it goes to nil, power prices will skyrocket, enforced rationing of power will occur, since the less wealthy consumers will not be able to afford the high market power price. And the high peak prices and open grid (ISO) will encourage CO2, Smog Emitting, Low Efficiency Diesel & NG OCGT's to sell electricity profitably, rendering the entire Smart Grid concept a fossil fuel gobbler. And encourage industry to install their own fuel guzzling peak power generation.
Get Real folks, it is far more sensible and cheaper to use home battery systems to reduce peak demand, than smart metering. And using Nuclear Energy for baseload plus stored or pumped Hydro for Peak & Shoulder load is far more economical than Smart Metering / Renewables. Make Electric Power Generation the servant of the people rather than the master, as Smart Grid & Renewable advocates want.
While these renewables ideologues push their Smart Grid Scam, the entire Grid is exceedingly vulnerable to the next big Solar Storm, which will fry Smart Grid electronics. Instead of the “Smart Grid”, what we need to focus on is the Robust Grid, which has low vulnerability to Natural Disasters, Solar Flares and EMP weapons. If the 1859 Solar Storm recurred, as it may in 2012, we will face the collapse of our power distribution system, which would take years to repair, and this wonderful Smart Grid, with Wind Farms, Solar Power plants and Run-of-River Hydro spread out over thousands of sq. miles WOULD BE TOAST!
The coming Solar Storm:
http://newpapyrusmagazine.blogspot.com/2010/03/solar-storm-of-century.html
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe smart grid is like the flying car, at best we'll see a protoype here and demonstration model there, but the sky will not look like the interstate in our lifetimes.
The complexity of something like a smart grid is enormous. It makes the Manhattan Project look like a tinker toy and the internet look like an erector set. As of yet we have no way to store large amounts of electricity to compensate for variation in demand. What goes out of the power plants has to exactly equal what goes into use. Imagine 130 million users each with dozens of devices of various demand cycling on and off all day, every day. That our existing system even works at all to me is amazing.
Distributed power generation, that is each user produces their own power (preferably sustainably), would be the most robust and least challenging system to build. If you lose power it's your own problem. The existing large scale grid would then only need to supply back up power to non critical users and full power (base load and peak load) to to critical infrastructure like hospitals, police, fire, emergency management, etc.
See: http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=how-home-solar-arrays-can-help-to-s-2010-06-01
This would reduce the need for large scale, trillion dollar, get it done now type projects that may or may not satisfy the requirements for a 'smart grid' and that we will all have to pay for with tax dollars and increased utility rates.
Let's eat this cow one bite at a time and quit thinking about stuffing the whole thing down our throats all at once.
gfza, power = voltage * current
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisVoltage is the pressure which the electrons are pushed in the wire (units of force per unit of electrons). Current is the flow rate of electrons (unit of electrons per second). Power is the energy flow rate (unit of energy per second). Its like watering your lawn, putting your finger over the hose decreases the flow rate of water (current) and increases the force of the water that does come out.