Inching Toward a Smarter Grid  

The NYT has a post on smart grid progress in the US, noting a smarter grid needs an expanded grid - Inching Toward a Smarter Grid

The stimulus bill splits funding for the nation’s electric grid into two separate pots, with $11 billion for the so-called “smart grid” — an umbrella term referring to a more efficient, digitally managed power delivery system — and $10 billion for power transmission.

But as the Center for American Progress pointed out this week in its new Wired for Progress report , there’s no real distinction between the two.

Transmission, after all, is part of a smart grid.

A truly national clean-energy smart grid must consist of two distinct components: an interstate “sustainable transmission grid” that will transport clean utility-scale renewable energy long distances to market, and a digital “smart distribution grid” to deliver this electricity efficiently to local consumers. The absence of a national grid that seamlessly integrates these two components is one of the biggest impediments to large-scale deployment of low-carbon electricity.

Thus the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission last week helped clear the way for the smart grid with a decision to approve rates for two new high-voltage direct-current, or DC, lines that will span 1,000 miles and connect wind farms in Montana and Wyoming with consumers in Las Vegas.

The commission projects, developed by TransCanada, are a “big deal” for smart grid development and mark “the beginning of what you’ll see, especially with the stimulus package,” said Gerald Sheble, a professor of electrical engineering and a smart grid expert at Portland State University in Oregon.

In addition to creating markets for hot new technology, the smart grid is ideally about building efficient, flexible power systems at lower cost and with increased reliability. Linking renewable power generated in remote locations to the grid means utilities gain flexibility in meeting their energy needs and can ultimately become more cost-competitive, said Mr. Sheble.

On an interstate transmission system, utilities could take advantage of time zone differences to manage wind power — shifting wind-generated resources from an area of the country where peak energy demand happened three hours earlier to an area where demand is still high.

As it stands, however, the nation’s electric grid is highly fragmented, with virtually no high voltage lines connecting the eastern half with the west. Bridging those systems is also extremely expensive. Connecting the eastern half to the Midwest, for example, could cost as much as $80 billion — as Matt Wald described in his Feb. 10 Green Inc. post.

NPR just ran a story on yesterday’s clean energy summit in Washington DC. The event was organized by Senator Harry Reid and included such luminaries as Boone Pickens, Bill Clinton, and Al Gore, in addition to political representatives such as Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Secretary of Energy Steven Chu. The Pickens Plan blog has a good post summarizing the event, including a link to a video of the event. I’d like to highlight two ideas that came up yesterday, and that the NPR story also discussed — the connection of smart grid technologies, invesments, and rhetoric to the construction of long-distance transmission, and the way that the state’s rights/eminent domain issues were discussed. This discussion focused on a narrow and unrepresentative set of issues in electricity policy, and even within smart grid policy.

Pelosi picked up on a point that Boone Pickens has been reiterating for months — they both contend that the US can be the “Saudi Arabia of wind”, but that transmission construction is crucial to get wind-generated power from where the wind blows to where people live, work, and consume electricity in the course of their daily activities. She stated explicitly that this transmission must be built, and that it must be a “smart grid”.

1. The smart grid can reduce the costly impact of blackouts. Our current energy grid is, well, dumb. It doesn't know when one of its components needs upkeep or has failed -- and the utility company doesn't know, either, until someone calls in to report it. Then we all just sit and wait for the lights to come back on.

A smart grid, by contrast, is self-aware, a point explained to Congress Wednesday by IBM vice president of strategy and development Allan Schurr. "Imagine a system that continuously monitors the state of the network, looking for approaching equipment failures by analyzing such things as transient voltage data and transformer oil temperature to predict when equipment may fail so it can be maintained or replaced just in time," he said.

Schurr continued, "Imagine a system that detects an outage and automatically isolates the problem by rerouting power to affected customers, while simultaneously diagnosing the cause and dispatching the nearest repair crew that has the replacement parts on the truck." ...

2. The smart grid can help measure and reduce energy consumption and costs. One of the visions for the smart grid is that consumers will be able to monitor their energy consumption in real time, or at least near real time, via the Web. Moreover, in the future, you'll be able to dig down to more granular levels to see how much energy individual systems and equipment are consuming and what it's costing.

For both businesses and consumers, this provides the opportunity to identify ways to reduce energy costs. You might find that changing the temperature a couple of degrees or that turning off more equipment at night can make a significant difference to your electricity bill. You might find that running certain processes after hours is more economical. You might also identify a major energy-drainer that should be replaced.

Taking it a step further: Suppose yours is a business with multiple sites, whether offices, retail stores, or call centers spread out across one state or the entire country. You'll be able to compare the energy consumption of each site and identify those that are using significantly more energy. From there, you can start digging into the causes and making changes. ...

3. The smart grid can help businesses reduce their carbon footprint. More and more companies are looking for ways to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide they're responsible for emitting, both for the sake of environmental stewardship and to comply with current or future legislation. Much of those emissions comes from electricity consumption, as power tends to be generated from coal and other fuels that produce CO2.

The smart grid can help companies reduce energy consumption, which in and of itself helps put a dent in their carbon footprints. But one of the promises of the smart grid is greater availability of clean energy, such as solar and wind power. "Whether in a utility scale configuration or in wholly distributed installations, the integration of renewables with traditional grid operations requires special consideration and smart grids can reduce this cost of assimilation," said IBM's Schurr. ...

4. The smart grid opens up new opportunities for tech companies. The third quarter of 2008 saw venture capital investments in energy efficiency and smart grid grow to $272 million. The market for metering hardware and software and networking technologies for the smart grid was $2.7 billion in 2008 and will grow to $4.7 billion in 2013, according to a report from Lux Research titled "Alternative Power and Energy Storage State of the Market Q4 2008: Weaving the $65 Billion Power Web." In other words, there's already plenty of money being invested and made from smart-grid projects, and there's more to come.

Much of that cash needs to go into the IT hardware and software that will make the smart grid work, from the meters and networking equipment to the software that aggregates and provides information. Numerous companies, both new and established, are taking part.