How Smart is a Smart Grid? | Green Energy News

July 21, 2009 – Vol.14 No.18

HOW SMART IS A SMART GRID?
by Bruce Mulliken, Green Energy News

The term “smart grid” is bandied about regularly in energy news, but what is it, what does it entail?

The smart grid concept at its most basic is a variety of technologies employed on the existing power grid (including buildings connected to the grid like our homes), to make it more efficient, more reliable, and reduce the operating costs of utilities while potentially reducing electricity costs to customers including homeowners and businesses. In short, smart grid aims to make the power grid work better without hanging (or burying) new transmission lines and building ever more power plants: Smart grid makes do with what’s available, using a little bit of technical innovation.

Here’s a short menu of possibilities that can be included under the term “smart grid”:

--- Through electronic connections to thermostats, or to the units themselves, power companies could be able to shut down customer-owned air conditioning systems briefly during peak demand to lessen the load on the grid and reduce the risk of blackouts or brownouts. These devices have been around for years;

--- A thermostat smart grid connection, too (as above) can allow customers to adjust their thermostats to cut air conditioning use during periods of peak demand and thus save electricity and money. Not unlike setback thermostats, also available for years;

--- Customers, through smart grid meters, will be encouraged to delay energy usage for other non-critical functions (such as washing dishes) until after peak periods when the cost of power goes down. They’ll also have pricing plans that will allow them to buy both peak and non-peak electricity at varying rates;

--- Eventually smart grid technology could be integral in all kinds of appliances. For instance, a dishwasher might tell the user it is automatically waiting for low power costs before running its cycle;

--- For customers with grid-tied renewable energy systems installed, smart grid will enhance the give-and-take of energy from the system. If there’s unused power from a customer’s energy system the grid can take it and put it to work. If the customer needs the power the utility will be shut out. Smart grid will keep track of interactions for informational and billing purposes;

--- If a building’s renewable energy system includes back-up energy storage, such as batteries, smart grid technology could allow (with the owner’s permission) that energy storage system to store grid-generated electricity. Home and business energy storage might eventually be part of the overall smart grid package;

--- If electric vehicles or plug-in hybrids become the norm (or at least fairly common), smart grid could allow a vehicle’s battery pack to be an energy storage device for the grid. Smart grid could also encourage drivers to plug in at low peak demand hours or automatically charge a vehicle’s battery only at off-peak hours;

--- At the utility end, new technologies will allow power companies to reroute power when outages occur;

--- Smart grids might also include energy storage on large and small scales. Large scale energy storage could be used to store off-peak energy generated but not consumed from wind farms, for instance. Smaller energy storage technologies can be used to smooth out the flow of electricity across the grid.

Smart grid isn’t a cure-all for what ails the power grid. While it may better incorporate renewable energy and seek a reduction in electricity use, it doesn’t replace dirty fossil fuel plants nor does it replace the aging network of transmission lines strung between often fragile wooden poles.

Smart grid also relies on customer input and participation to be successful at cutting electricity consumption. A poll from General Electric questioning homeowners in the US and U.K. showed “that three out of five people in both countries would change their electricity consumption behavior around smart grid adoption. Two thirds in both countries would monitor their energy usage online at least once a week.”

But a poll is just a poll. Will homeowners actually change their consumption behavior? Consumers could change their consumption behavior now without smart grid and save considerable cash, but, it’s safe to say, mostly don’t.

The big difficulty with smart grid is that only some of the possibilities on the menu will be employed for now. There are no plans to build numerous large scale energy storage devices, for example. Nor are utility companies (with some exceptions) doing much to build distributed generation networks connected by a smart grid.

It is possible that smart grid will get smarter over time with more features added. But for now the grid is still in the learning stages, not smart but getting better educated.