At the heart of the grid spins the same dynamo first set to work more than 100 years ago. Whether the heat comes from the burning of coal or the fissioning of nuclear material, the goal is the same—spinning a turbine that then spins a tube of stacked copper....[More]
PRIME MOVER:
At the heart of the grid spins the same dynamo first set to work more than 100 years ago. Whether the heat comes from the burning of coal or the fissioning of nuclear material, the goal is the same—spinning a turbine that then spins a tube of stacked copper. That spinning copper generates electricity—generally speaking 10,000 or 20,000 volts' worth—and the smart grid won't change that.
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Courtesy of Alstom
STEP UP:
The electricity that comes out of the power plant isn't ready to travel to your home or business yet. First, it has to be stepped to as much as 765,000 volts in order to make the trip, with a corresponding loss in amperage....[More]
STEP UP:
The electricity that comes out of the power plant isn't ready to travel to your home or business yet. First, it has to be stepped to as much as 765,000 volts in order to make the trip, with a corresponding loss in amperage. The high voltage minimizes the losses to resistance en route.
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Courtesy of Detroit Public Television
TRANSMISSION TOWER:
Electricity today is ported hundreds of kilometers as three-phase alternating current, typically. The smart grid might update such transmission to high-voltage direct current lines that reduce losses en route—estimated to be roughly 7 percent by the U.S....[More]
TRANSMISSION TOWER:
Electricity today is ported hundreds of kilometers as three-phase alternating current, typically. The smart grid might update such transmission to high-voltage direct current lines that reduce losses en route—estimated to be roughly 7 percent by the U.S. Department of Energy. Current sensors provide information every four seconds or so, but new devices, known as synchrophasors, can sample multiple times a second—providing more information than may ultimately be necessary about the state of the transmission infrastructure in order to prevent major blackouts, like the one in 2003.
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Courtesy of SmartSynch
CONTROL ROOM:
Operators at control rooms across the country, such as shift manager Kostantinos Pitsoulis of Consolidated Edison's Manhattan electric operations, pictured here, do everything from monitoring the health of grid components such as feeder lines to balancing the amount of electricity being generated with the amount being used at any given moment....[More]
CONTROL ROOM:
Operators at control rooms across the country, such as shift manager Kostantinos Pitsoulis of Consolidated Edison's Manhattan electric operations, pictured here, do everything from monitoring the health of grid components such as feeder lines to balancing the amount of electricity being generated with the amount being used at any given moment. Like orchestra conductors, some operators must also ensure that all the sources of electricity generation are "humming" at the same frequency of 60 cycles per second.
Operators must also compensate for near instantaneous losses of generation—whether that be a nuclear power plant tripping off-line or a sudden die-down in the wind. "You can lose 1,100 megawatts in 10 minutes," says Kieran Connolly, manger of the generating scheduling at Bonneville Power Administration. "They don't come back up as quickly as they come down."
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Courtesy of Consolidated Edison Company
SUBSTATION:
Once the electricity has made the nearly instantaneous trip from the power plant to an area where electricity is consumed, such as the city of Boulder, Colo., a transformer converts it again from its transmission voltage to one suitable for local distribution within a city or region, typically 115,000 volts....[More]
SUBSTATION:
Once the electricity has made the nearly instantaneous trip from the power plant to an area where electricity is consumed, such as the city of Boulder, Colo., a transformer converts it again from its transmission voltage to one suitable for local distribution within a city or region, typically 115,000 volts. Transformers are essentially large spools of insulated copper wire that turn around each other, changing the electric field between them.
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Courtesy of SmartSynch
SWITCH:
Components, such as the switch pictured here, control the flow of electricity as well as monitor the distribution grid. Smart switches, like the one pictured here in Consolidated Edison's system in New York, can look in both directions along a given line and communicate with operators wirelessly or automatically reroute electricity around problems—preventing power losses....[More]
SWITCH:
Components, such as the switch pictured here, control the flow of electricity as well as monitor the distribution grid. Smart switches, like the one pictured here in Consolidated Edison's system in New York, can look in both directions along a given line and communicate with operators wirelessly or automatically reroute electricity around problems—preventing power losses.
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Courtesy of Consolidated Edison Company
DISTRIBUTION:
Once the electricity approaches its destination in the distribution grid, another transformer lowers the voltage again to something more suitable for use....[More]
DISTRIBUTION:
Once the electricity approaches its destination in the distribution grid, another transformer lowers the voltage again to something more suitable for use. In New York City, that's roughly 13,000 volts. Sensors at such substations will help improve reliability and efficiency. Then it's off to your house, where it's stepped down again to 120 volts before coming out the socket, generally speaking.
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Courtesy of SmartSynch
REGULATORS:
Devices called regulators ensure that the voltage on a given distribution line, known as a feeder, remains the same throughout the day—even as the demand for electricity goes up and down.
The smart grid will ensure that, in the event of an outage, electricity is restored, as much as possible, automatically. The system instantly isolates any failures and reveals to operators, such as Consolidated Edison senior instructor Patrick Kelly, pictured here, the source of the problem—rather than relying on a phone call from angry customers....[More]
AUTO LOOP:
The smart grid will ensure that, in the event of an outage, electricity is restored, as much as possible, automatically. The system instantly isolates any failures and reveals to operators, such as Consolidated Edison senior instructor Patrick Kelly, pictured here, the source of the problem—rather than relying on a phone call from angry customers.
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Courtesy of Consolidated Edison Company
SMART METER:
There are 130 million "dumb" meters in use in the U.S. today, by some estimates. Smartened-up versions would enable two-way communication—information from you to the utility and back again—which might boost reliability and efficiency, among other improvements....[More]
SMART METER:
There are 130 million "dumb" meters in use in the U.S. today, by some estimates. Smartened-up versions would enable two-way communication—information from you to the utility and back again—which might boost reliability and efficiency, among other improvements. Of course, there's also the potential that the smart meters of today will be just as outdated tomorrow. "I hope we don't spend a lot of money on an outdated technology," says geophysicist Roger Anderson of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, who predicts that all home-based meters will merge into one box in the near future.
There are also plans to extend the smart grid even further into the home. The idea is to implant communications technology in devices such as refrigerators, allowing utilities to put them into a power-saving mode when they need to reduce electrical demand. It remains to be seen how comfortable customers will be with utility companies controlling their appliances. "We're all living with Twitter and Facebook, there's no privacy anymore anyway," says New York State Smart Grid Consortium chairman Robert Catell. "We should protect consumers' sensitive information, but knowing when you turn on lights or plug your car in, I'm not sure there's a good reason to be scared."
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Courtesy of Consolidated Edison Company
INDUSTRIAL METERS:
Whereas local homes constitute the bulk of the total customer base, stores and factories are actually responsible for more than half of the total electricity usage—and more than half of electricity sales....[More]
INDUSTRIAL METERS:
Whereas local homes constitute the bulk of the total customer base, stores and factories are actually responsible for more than half of the total electricity usage—and more than half of electricity sales. Smart meters and control systems can help reduce that electricity usage and allow operators to ramp it up or down depending on the grid's capacity at any given moment.
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Courtesy of SmartSynch
INTERMITTENT FUTURE:
Regardless of how smart it is, the grid of the future will have to deal with less predictable sources of electricity, such as the solar panels pictured here....[More]
INTERMITTENT FUTURE:
Regardless of how smart it is, 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. Already, utility companies such as Pacific Gas & Electric must cope with homes that supply much of their own power thanks to solar panels—most of the time. "When a cloud rolls over, how do you make sure you pump out enough electricity to reach the last home on the line?" points out Pacific Gas & Electric's senior director for the smart grid Andrew Tang.
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Courtesy of Consolidated Edison Company
YES! Send me a free issue of Scientific American with no obligation to continue the subscription. If I like it, I will be billed for the one-year subscription.
This 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. Smart + 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. How 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. For 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.
AC 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.
The smart grid makes sense to me. Why would we want to continue being so wasteful? I 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.
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.
I 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:
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 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.
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.
10. TobyLongbeach
in reply to gfza07:15 PM 3/15/13
gfza, power = voltage * current Voltage 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.
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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.