In a freewheeling chat on the side lines of a conference on Communications and Smart Grids, at the Electrical Engineering Department, Delhi Technological University, Dr Aristides E Kiprakis, Lecturer in Power Systems, Edinburgh University, spoke about the technological possibilities of smart grids, implementation challenges and the way ahead The key element of your lecture today Continue reading →
The U.S. is facing an infrastructure problem that many predict will cost astronomical sums to fix. Power grids, bridges, municipal water systems and much of the infrastructure that facilitates modern society was built decades ago and is now in need of repair or replacement. But the levels of investment required to upgrade critical services are Continue reading →
With electricity consumption climbing steadily higher as American homes and businesses rely more and more on an array of new gadgets, utilities have been looking into ways to meet the growing demand. A lot of the attention has focused on the green energy business, or sometimes the booming natural gas industry, but GreentechMedia notes that Continue reading →
It has become a truism of modern management that “if you don’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” Managing the modern electric grid requires tools that can effectively measure system conditions across wide areas and in real time. Among the lessons learned from the massive Northeast blackout of August 2003 is the need to “adopt Continue reading →
The fundamental premise of the smart grid is very simple. Energy companies need more information about what is happening in the electricity network to be able to manage supply more accurately. Consumers need more information about their energy usage to reduce consumption and expenditure, and as a nation we need to use less energy if Continue reading →
The California Independent System Operator Corporation (ISO) Board of Governors recently approved five new power line projects specifically intended to meet California’s environmental and energy goals. The projects were part of the 2012-2013 Transmission Plan approved by the Board. The plan also identified the need for 36 projects that support regional and national reliability standards. Continue reading →
As solar panels and electric cars catch on among consumers, managing the grid becomes an increasingly vexing challenge for utilities. To keep track of these and other distributed energy resources, utilities are installing ever more smart meters and other monitoring equipment. They now need to track far more data from far-flung locations just to reliably Continue reading →
ZigBee IP Stack certification is now available at NTS Advanced Technology (NTS-AT for short). The ZigBee IP Stack has been specifically developed/updated for the needs of the new ZigBee Smart Energy 2.0 standard. And ZigBee Smart Energy 2.0 is one member of the consortium (ZigBee, Wi-Fi and HomePlug) developing the latest Smart Energy Profile. If you Continue reading →
After Hurricane Sandy smarty-pants pundits like me suggested that maybe what we need right away is not a smarter, more agile grid but, rather, a really tough dumb grid. Indisputably, technologies integrating digital communications and computing into power system infrastructure were materializing much more slowly than their proponents had predicted, and measurable benefits were hard Continue reading →
Despite limited interest and limited availability, smart appliances will play an increasingly important role in the smart grid as utilities worldwide deploy smart meters. According to Pike Research, smart appliances will represent a growing share of the total appliance market after 2015 with the annual market value increasing from $613 million in 2012 to $34.9 Continue reading →
In July last year an electricity grid failure plunged India into darkness, affecting about 20 States. As the country takes steps to improve its supply and grid system, Bindu N. Lohani, Vice-President, Sustainable Energy and Knowledge Management, Asian Development Bank (ADB), feels a smartgrid can be one way of improving efficiencies and integrating cleaner energy Continue reading →
While the reasons for the 34-minute power outage during Sunday’s Super Bowl remain largely unknown, advocates for a smarter energy grid say it is the latest example of why the nation needs desperately to invest in its electricity infrastructure. The blackout in New Orleans, coupled with the recent prolonged outages in New York and New Continue reading →
Smart electric meters provide a platform for energy efficiency improvements, new customer services, and network optimization. To achieve those goals across Europe, more than 30 million meters will need to be deployed annually during the peak years of activity, and major upgrade programs will need to be executed simultaneously in Europe’s largest countries, along with Continue reading →
It was heartening to see President Obama include an ample reference to the importance of climate-smart energy policies in his short inaugural address today. The speech is presumably a sketch of what’s to come in the State of the Union message and policy initiatives this year. In his speech, Obama framed the need to address Continue reading →
As the next phase of smart grid deployments begins, which will entail moving beyond advanced metering infrastructure and focusing on utility-facing improvements, power companies will need to keep interoperability in mind and look to distribution automation to successfully implement smart grid technologies, according to The Energy Collective. via Getting the smart grid of the ground, Continue reading →
A lot of the time, grid energy storage is discussed in the context of renewable energy. Storage is cited as a necessary solution to the diurnal nature of solar and wind energy. “We need storage because the sun doesn’t shine at night.” “Wind energy is greatest at night, so we need storage to shift wind Continue reading →
Each new large-scale natural disaster delivers its own unique cocktail of heartache and damage, but the need to modernize the electrical grid is a common denominator—growing only more glaring with each new setback. More than 8 million people along the U.S. East Coast were rendered powerless in the wake of October 2012’s Hurricane Sandy, for Continue reading →
Each new large-scale natural disaster delivers its own unique cocktail of heartache and damage, but the need to modernize the electrical grid is a common denominator—growing only more glaring with each new setback. More than 8 million people along the U.S. East Coast were rendered powerless in the wake of October 2012’s Hurricane Sandy, for Continue reading →
By now, the novelty of electric vehicles has worn off as Chevy, Nissan, Mitsubishi and Tesla among other manufacturers are up and rolling. Now it’s time to focus on dollars and cents as well as the environment if the industry isn’t going to remain a marginal, barely significant blip in the sea of new autos Continue reading →
Like Smart Grid News, we at Silver Spring Networks are celebrating our 10th anniversary. We’ve grown up together. In the beginning the ideas we both espoused were considered radical – but now proven right. The industry has unequivocally crossed a tipping point and the next 10 years will bring more change, faster than the last. Continue reading →
