The obstacles on smart grids

BRIEFING: "Smart grids: Wiser wires; Information technology can make electricity grids less wasteful and much greener. Businesses have lots of ideas and governments are keen, but obstacles remain," The Economist, 10 October 2009.

The greatest engineering achievement of the 20th century? America's National Academy of Engineering said in 200 that it was "the vast networks of electrification," which made everything else possible.

But here's the rub: cars and everything else mechanical and computing have gotten so much more sophisticated with each passing decade, whereas our electrical nets basically have the same set-up and technology. Most utilities don't know if the grid is down--unless consumers call them up.

So what is the "smart grid"? All sorts of IT, such as sensors, digital meters and an Internet-like comms net that makes everything "smart" in the sense that information can be derived from and through them and transmitted over them.

It would thus make energy efficiencies possible and allow new networking opportunities, like electric cars and distributed generation (many sites all over the grid generating power instead of just one or a few main stations).

Plenty of money in the stimulus packages set aside for this, and over $1B in VC money in start-ups. Most promising is the joining up of IT firms like Cisco and IBM with major energy providers.

But the larger point: a smart grid should boost technology and engineering overall just like the original grids did. Lots of details to be worked out, naturally, but the point is the overall thrust and so many new players to the game seeing opportunity.

This is good.

Comments

[Andy B]

Glad to see Smart Grid on Tom's radar. FYI: I'm trying to tease out of DOD their plans to ensure that they're ready for this. Smart Grid technology overlaps with microgrid technology, which when implemented will make bases much less reliant on the still brittle national grid system. Any insight/help from readers would be appreciated.

[large]

Problem is, most power suppliers couldn't care less about their consumers. You said; "Most utilities don't know if the grid is down--unless consumers call them up." And I agree.

What really rubs me is, My Power supplier can read my meter from their offices, shut my power of remotely if I don't pay my bill, but can't keep from having Power Surges and outages daily. And those Power Surges, usually followed by an outage of 1 minute to 30, just kills any IC controlled device within my house and studio. 3 coffee makers this year . . anything that runs constantly is on a surge protector, but they only seem to help partially. Questions and complaints get either very srupid or no answers at all . .

A letter to the State PUC elicited a bureaucratic yawn . . or "So What"

I believe it to be 2009 controls on a 1920 infrastructure.

The system needs to be a little more two sided . .

[Louis Heberlein]

A key feature of Smart Grid involves cost effective high temperature super conductivity for efficient distribution over thousands of miles. Pioneered by NIST, demonstrated by DOD customers, and now being utilized in countries like India and China. Where have you seen it highlighted in US general or financial info media?