Smart Grid Blog

Everyone who has ever had an electricity supply in their home or office knows what a traditional electricity meter is and what it does.  You may have probably never even given much thought to what else it can do, apart from providing you with an accurate count of all the power you’ve consumed.   However, if you think that that’s where the evolution of technology stops with respect to meters, think again.

A new device called a Smart Meter has already been introduced in to the UK market.  As the name suggests, it’s a smart meter – in other words, it is capable of providing you with a lot more information about your power consumption than just whole numbers.

via Business Electricity Smart Meter.

Townsville Enterprise Limited (TEL) says north Queensland would be in the international spotlight when it comes to energy efficiency if the Federal Government chooses the city to host a smart grid initiative.

TEL spokeswoman Lisa McDonald says the Federal Government has short-listed Townsville as one of three cities to trial the program which will trial ways to best reduce power consumption in homes and businesses.

via Townsville in ‘smart grid’ bid – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation).

Any smart grid is a telecommunications network for the utility and the communities it serves. 4G technologies provide any power utility with the most cost effective technology in monitoring the grid from power production to power consumption. Not only will a 4G smart grid read meters, they will also provide a range of cost saving services to the utility and the community as a whole.

via 4g And Wimax For The Smart Grid Enabling Access Applications And Affordability.

The Miramar Air Station, a Marine Corps installation near San Diego, currently has 11 renewable energy projects in the works designed to reduce dependency on fossil fuels and reduce power consumption. Included are hot water heaters and car park lighting powered by solar energy as well as additional solar panels installed on rooftops. Energy will also be captured from landfill gases.

According to Randy Monohan, utilities and energy manager at the base, energy consumption will be reduced by almost 80 percent by 2015. The goal is to get Miramar to ‘net-zero’ energy usage.

Officials at the Department of Defence eventually want all military installations to generate as much energy as they consume. Net-zero military bases are more secure in the eyes of the Pentagon. Military leaders have always been concerned about how a disruption to the country’s power grid would affect a war-fighting mission. Creating self-sufficient military bases dependent only on renewable power would eliminate these fears.

“We are methodically going through and figuring out where we can island,” wrote Gueta Mezzetti, co-chairman of the Defence Science Board task force on energy, in a 2008 report. The task force concluded that critical military and homeland defence installation were vulnerable to disruptions of the nation’s power grid.

Mezzetti spoke to energy industry officials at the GovEnergy conference held in Rhode Island last week. She said she could not over emphasise “the gravity of the issue.” Steven White, energy program manager at the Homeland Security Department was also concerned and said that transmission lines that deliver electricity to residential consumers are most vulnerable to external attacks.

“An individual with $10 can take out a large area of distribution and go largely unnoticed,” said White at the GovEnergy conference.

Mezzetti also spoke of the need for self-contained smart grids at military facilities. Currently, the military and other federal facilities depend upon data provided by utility companies to determine the status and health of their power supply. Mezzetti said that utilities don’t really have a clear grasp of the flow of electricity within their network.

Creating self-contained smart grids where a generator derives energy from solar arrays, fuel cells, or other renewable sources to supply the bases would make the military installations self-sufficient outside of the public grid. Grid operators would be able to quickly switch the grid on should disruptions occur with the public grid.

via Pentagon looks to renewables and smart grids for security.