Smart Grid Blog

The network of electrical wires, poles and switches that powers our lights and appliances and charges our cell phones and iPods will soon undergo one of the biggest transformations in energy industry history.

More than 700,000 customers in Greater Cincinnati will be among the first to see it happen, as the nation’s century-old electric delivery system moves toward a 21st-century “smart grid.”

Think interactive meters that allow homeowners to keep track of how much energy they use daily, and to choose to use it when power costs are lowest. For utilities, think a system that spots household problems even when owners are away, and pinpoints outages faster and at less cost.

via We’re Plugging In to the Smart Grid | cincinnati.com | Cincinnati.Com.

The market for residential energy management is poised to grow dramatically due to increased consumer demand and new government and industry initiatives. Frequently, and for good reason, the discussions about this emerging market focus on the expansion of Smart Grids as these solutions enable electricity distribution systems to manage alternative energy sources (e.g., solar and wind), improve reliability, facilitate faster response rates to outages, and manage peak-load demands.

via Smart Grid: Bringing the Smart Grid to the Smart Home: It’s Not Only About the Meter.

Part of India’s growing power demands will soon be met with smart grid technologies that improve efficiency and reliability for businesses and consumers. North Delhi Power Limited (NDPL) on September 22 announced it would become the first major utility in India to realize the performance advantages of an advanced outage management system (OMS).

A joint venture between Tata Power, India’s largest private power company and the government of Delhi, NDPL distributes electricity to approximately five million people in the Delhi metro area. According to the International Energy Agency, India’s energy demand will more than double by 2030, potentially increasing the frequency of power outages even in the most developed areas of Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore. These outages would have a significant impact on the economy and, as a result, the government of India is looking to smart grid technologies to improve the efficiency and the economic stability of the country’s power sector.

via Smart grid technologies to address outage issues in India.

The state’s major electricity distributors earlier this month took the first in a series of steps to move toward a so-called “smart grid” by seeking federal stimulus money to help finance their planned investments in enabling infrastructure.

PSE&G, Atlantic City Electric and Jersey Central Power & Light plan to invest more than $200 million to build and operate a smarter grid that brings more reliability, security, efficiency and affordability to customers. They are encouraged by a federal government offer to finance up to half their investments in such a system.

Improving a distributor’s response to an outage, for example, is one of the goals of smart-grid technologies, said Richard Wernsing, PSE&G’s top executive responsible for enhancing reliability of service to customers.

PSE&G said it is seeking $76 million in federal support for its $152 million program, which it expects will create 551 new jobs.

One of the ways PSE&G plans to spend its budget is in building 62 new distribution loops, or “advanced loop schemes” with fewer customers in each loop, “reducing the number and duration of power outages in the case of a fault,” according to a statement from the utility.

“When there’s an outage, the utilities today don’t know how many people are out. The smart-grid people will tell them how many people are out, and point them to the exact location and the exact problem,” said Lance Miller, chief of policy and planning at the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities, the state’s electricity regulator.

via Stimulus aims to plug utilities into smarter energy grid – NJBIZ.com.

A smarter electricity grid could fundamentally change the way people pay for and manage their electricity use. In theory, the technology could help reduce demand, save money, and improve reliability and efficiency. But implementing the necessary changes will be difficult, according to experts attending a symposium on the smart grid at GE Global Research in Niskayuna, NY, this week. They expect resistance from regulators and consumers alike, citing the complexity of the proposed system as well as concerns about privacy and security.

The smart grid will incorporate new networking technology, including sensors and controls that make it possible to monitor electricity use in real time and make automatic changes that reduce energy waste. Furthermore, grid operators should be able to instantly detect problems that could lead to cascading outages, like the ones that cut power to the northeastern United States in 2003. And the technology ought to allow energy companies to incorporate more intermittent, renewable sources of electricity, such as wind turbines, by keeping the grid stable in the face of minute-by-minute changes in output.

For consumers, the smart grid could also mean radical changes in the way they pay for electricity. Instead of a flat rate, they could be charged much more at times of high demand, encouraging them to reduce their energy use during these periods. Companies such as GE are developing refrigerators, dryers, and other appliances that can automatically respond to signals from the utility, shutting off or reducing energy consumption to allow consumers to avoid paying the peak prices. Such strategies could allow utilities to put off building new transmission lines and generators to meet peak demand–savings that could be important as proposed regulations on carbon dioxide emissions force them to switch to more expensive sources of electricity.

via Technology Review: The Big Smart Grid Challenges.

GE Energy and Orion New Zealand have implemented the first phase of a GE network management system to help improve power reliability for customers in New Zealand.

Orion New Zealand has said that the system of smart grid technologies will significantly improve the network company’s ability to manage big network emergencies and help it to restore power faster when outages occur.

GE has said that its ENMAC Distribution Management System is the foundation of Orion’s initiative. The ENMAC system, to be fully implemented by mid-2010, will help Orion monitor the distribution grid and will give operators an accurate, real-time picture of power flow, trouble spots and potential workarounds for outages.

Orion has completed the supervisory control and data acquisition phase of the project, enabling real-time monitoring and control of the network. The project is now in its second phase with the installation of a distribution network management system, which will enable Orion to maintain and control its network from a single viewpoint.

via GE, Orion Begin Smart Grid Project to Improve Power Supply in New Zealand.

On Feb. 26, 2008, a short circuit in a Miami electric power substation and an operator’s error gave managers of the nation’s electrical grids a glimpse of an uneasy future. The events triggered a chain reaction of power plant and transmission line outages in the state, unleashing sharp swings in voltages and power frequency that blacked out power for nearly 1 million customers in southern and central Florida for up to four hours.

A stunning consequence of the outage was the lightning-like spread of destabilizing power frequencies throughout the eastern United States and southern Canada in the space of six seconds. Then, fortunately, the grid managed to settle itself without a much bigger blackout.

This and similar threats to the stability of the nation’s power supply might go undetected until too late but for the development of monitoring systems that can provide snapshots of the grid’s changing conditions in each fraction of a second. Experts say this emerging capability will play a vital role in the next big evolution of the nation’s power transmission system: equipping it to handle a rising flow of wind and solar power that is central to the nation’s climate policy.

A video depicting the Florida incident’s rippling spread has been created by Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University’s electrical and computer engineering department, which caught the disturbance on its first-generation grid frequency monitoring network. Some grid executives have downloaded the video on their laptops as a kind of horror flick for engineers of what could happen.

Power companies and grid managers are developing an advanced monitoring system across the United States and Canada, using what are called synchrophasor units to gather, analyze and distribute data on grid conditions. About 150 of the units have been deployed, and the industry has created the North American SynchroPhasor Initiative — supported by the Department of Energy and the North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC) — to expand the technology. DOE is offering grants totaling $615 million for smart grid demonstration projects, including synchrophasors, as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

via Devices emerge to handle the quirks of adding more renewable energy to the grid – NYTimes.com.