Scott Jarman, an engineer with Austin Energy, atop a city building that is testing architectural wind as a possible energy source. The smart grid of the future, says the company’s general manager, Roger Duncan, will include much more interaction between building owners and the utility. (Photo: Associated Press)“Smart grid” is an exciting term that comes up a lot these days. But what does it actually mean? I sat down last week with Roger Duncan, general manager of Austin Energy, one of the most innovative utilities in the nation.
Taking a wide view of the electric grid of the future — one that will likely see increased demand from electrified cars — Mr. Duncan envisions a triangle of consumption and production, its three points being the utility; homes and buildings; and the transportation sector.
In the old model, Mr. Duncan said, the utility simply produced the electricity, delivering it over transmission lines to commercial and residential customers who used it.
“And then you had a transportation sector completely disconnected that ran off petroleum,” he said.
Now, the utility and its customers are developing a much more symbiotic relationship, with more and more homes and businesses, for instance, placing solar panels on their rooftops, allowing them to generate energy that utilities can purchase and redistribute. Essentially, said Mr. Duncan, utilities and customers alike are becoming both consumers and producers of electricity.
Meanwhile, the the transportation sector is slowly becoming part of the electricity equation.
Very slowly. Currently there are only several hundred plug-in hybrid cars in the nation, and Mr. Duncan reckons that large-scale adoption could take another decade. But one day the transportation sector, too, may act as both a consumer and a producer of electricity, if plug-ins become a reality. Not only will they run on electricity, but the energy stored in their charged batteries could be tapped at hours when the grid needs it.
Before this grand vision of a smart grid is to be achieved, Mr. Duncan concedes that there are plenty of questions to be answered. “What are the actual hardware connections that we need?” he asked. “What is the software that will allow us to communicate, even to the level of communicating with appliances like your refrigerator or your pool pump?”
There is also the problem of energy storage. Battery technology must be improved before plug-in hybrids can work on a commercial scale — or before the sun’s energy can be stored for use at night, or the wind’s energy at calm times of the day. “We haven’t developed energy storage capacity yet,” said Mr. Duncan — nor plenty of other tools for the smart grid of the future.
Still, things are moving forward. By the end of next year, Austin Energy may become the first utility in the nation to have installed so-called “smart meters” in every home in its service area.
Smart meters — which are the beating hearts of any smart-grid system — allow both home and building owners, as well as utilities, to monitor power demands in real time, creating a more efficient system of electricity pricing.
That means that rather than charging a flat rate for power, utilities can set prices that vary by time of day — so that people who run their dishwashers at midnight on a midsummer evening, when there is little strain on the electricity system, might pay less than those who run them at 3 p.m., when air-conditioners are on at full blast.
source: nytimes
link to the original post:
http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/08/on-the-road-to-a-smart-grid/#more-659
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Rory Vanucchi
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