Green grid: Measure, control, communicate
The smart grid of yesterday is vastly different from what we see today. The changes in the smart grid have been deployed in multiple stages and have changed the operation of the grid at many different levels. This change has effectively increased the resiliency of the grid thus improving the quality and reliability of the power. The motivation for the smart grid comes from the fact that the legacy power delivery systems waste resources and are not cost effective for consumers and the utilities alike. Lack of resource management and optimization was considerably more detrimental to the environment than it needs to be. The primary barriers to modernization were due to the fact that the industry has traditionally been reluctant to experiment with new technology that, if unsuccessful, could risk significant interruption of service. Not to mention that the benefits of modernization will not be realized instantly and are quite possibly underappreciated, but the costs are real and immediate. Today, engineering at each fold of the grid is enabling a revolution; bringing about grid modernization.
Conventionally, information collected were outputs and consumption was at various points along the transmission. With a uni-directional centralized distribution system the primary goal was to adequately support and measure consumption. This radial grid topology integrated fewer sensors with minimal monitoring and control ability requiring manual restoration in case of an outage. Today’s heterogeneous power grids combine renewables with multiple standby power systems, creating the requirement and opportunity for a profit-optimized grid controller that can calculate the cost of generating power from all available sources, optimizing grid versus renewables such as solar and wind.
Government mandated increase in renewable energy integration and customer-sponsored generation contribute significantly to this hybrid green grid architecture. Complementary to this, battery technology is improving close to the point of commercial viability, and the major automakers embrace hybrid and electric auto. Standby and off-grid power both combine lead, lithium, flow and flywheels in ways that create opportunities to lower costs by optimally managing responsiveness, regulation and coverage time. With a high degree of sensor integration testing through remote check can be realized while equipping the system for outage recovery through self-reconfiguration. This pervasive control improves the overall grid efficiency while the customer benefits from both awareness and cost.
The historical model of large, central station power generators sending electricity over the grid to passive customers in homes and businesses in a largely one-way flow is increasingly coming under pressure. The future power system may be vastly more decentralized, populated by intermittent generating sources, but it will still be problematic to predict power needs. Thus, the power system of the future will be more difficult to operate and control than the system of today. The grid will require a new generation of power management and control technologies, as well as data management and communications tools. The smart grid is about so much more than just smart meters. Smart meters represent the customer side of the smart grid revolution, and have encountered some acceptance problems. At this point in time, power customers see very little in the way of benefits for themselves from advanced metering infrastructure (AMI).
To see how TI and Nuvation are enabling a Green Power Grid to measure, control & communicate attend the free webinar on 19th March. To register visit http://www.nuvation.com/nuvation-texas-instruments-smart-grid-webinar
