The Smart Grid: an improvement on the network structure of the power grid
While browsing and reading through many of the blogs previously written by students, I was surprised by the fact that not too many people have talked about, or mentioned, one of the largest (and I would argue the most important) network system in modern culture: the power grid. Without it, you would not be reading this blog post. In fact, you would not be able to do most of the things that you do throughout the day such as place a phone call, turn on the lights, use a microwave or store your food in the fridge, communicate through the internet, etc. We take the light switch and power outlets for granted without realizing that the network that “feeds” our modern culture is in fact a very fragile and weak network. The focus of this post is thus to point out the weaknesses of the network structure of the current systems that we have, and explain the changes that have started to be made towards a “smart grid”, and its implications to the networks structure. I will also mention how these improvements will change the operation (buying and selling) of power in the electricity market.
The power grid that we see today is a complex structure that was set up towards the end of the 19th century as a way to connect power generating plants to factories and homes in order to distribute electricity. The system that we still use today hasn’t changed much since Thomas Edison started his work with power transmission. In fact it has been said that if “Alexander Graham Bell were somehow transported to the 21st century, he would not begin to recognize the components of modern telephony – cell phones, texting, cell towers, PDA’s, etc. – while Thomas Edison, one of the grid’s key early architects, would be totally familiar with the grid”. With such an old network, things are bound to stop working, lines will break, and transformers overheat, which can result in blackouts. Berkley Lab has estimated an $80 Billion annual cost due to power outages and blackouts in the U.S. alone.
Most of us have probably heard of the term “smart grid” at some point or another in the news or in advertisement, but what exactly is a “smart grid”? This term is the name that is starting to be used for a new power grid networks that are slowly being built to replace (or upgrade) the current power network that we have today. The current network is composed of power plant generating stations that transmits large quantities of power to smaller substations that distribute the power to various parts of the country through an elaborate network of power lines. This network is mainly one-directional, meaning that it was designed to support the flow of power only in one direction, from the power plant to your house, and not the other way around. But as more and more companies start producing renewable energies, and as the demand for energy increases, it becomes more important than ever to have a multidirectional graph (think of the graphs that we have seen in class where links between nodes have a certain direction; to go from one node to the other in some cases requires more “steps” that it would it each link was bi-directional). A smart grid would allow for that to happen (for example: you could install solar panels in your house, and sell the excess power back to the power company so that the electricity that you produced could be used by other homes in the vicinity).
The beauty of the smart grid is that it will build upon a network that already exists and is ever expanding: the information network. The smart grid would allow for sensors to be places at various strategic locations throughout the network (houses, transformers, substations, etc.) and through the Internet, would allow power companies to monitor the health and the demand of electricity at each node in order to operate it more efficiently. Today, power companies have to predict how much power will be consumed in a specific area during the day, and then they have to buy the energy from power companies, and/or instruct smaller substations to increase or decrease their energy output. These predictions are not always accurate and thus we end up wasting a lot of energy. With a smart grid, live monitoring of the grid would take the estimation out of the electricity market, and would allow power centrals to accurately tell power companies how much energy to produce and where to send the electricity.
With regards to the last point, I want to briefly discuss another issue that the “smart grid” would solve with regards to a topic that we have discussed in class: markets. The electricity market, much like many of the other markets, operate through a system of bid and ask prices that govern (generally in the form of financial or obligation swaps) the flow of electricity. Companies usually will run complicated simulations in order to estimate the amount of power that its customers will require throughout the day, and though the electricity market, either buy or sell electricity from power plants in order to meet that demand. In times of high demand, electricity prices increase since electricity companies have to purchase electricity from smaller power plants that sell their power in the electricity market at much higher prices than what a continuous power plant would sell.
With a smart grid, closely monitoring the grid would mean that better predictions could be made, and therefore reduce the price electricity during peak hours. A smart grid would also allow us, as consumers, to monitor the current electricity price, and decide on the best time of the day to run appliances that would use a lot of electricity.
Overall, what I want to portray through this blog post is that the system that we use everyday is in fact an outdated system that is bound to collapse in the near future unless we invest the money and technological resources to improve one of the most important network systems that we use today. This network system is what makes our cultural development possible (technological improvements, social communication, media broadcasting, etc.) and is in much need of attention. Just like the Internet has evolved tremendously over the last few years, the power grid system in 20 years will most likely be significantly different and will utilize the information network to its advantage.
Sources:
http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/EETD-power-interruptions.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_market
http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/oeprod/DocumentsandMedia/DOE_SG_Book_Single_Pages%281%29.pdf