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The
Smart Grid: Is It Worth It? |
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Recently
I saw an advertisement about the smart grid where a man poses the question: First
man: "Did you know that more than 30% of the electricity generated will
never light a light bulb, it just goes to waste?" Second
man: "Is that really true?" (In a tone of voice that means he is
going to do something about it if it does turn out to be true.) The Ad
then goes on to say that the smart grid will solve all these problems and
that as a result more power will be available. This is
the kind of disinformation that is floating around about the smart grid, and
I have to state that most articles I have read about the smart grid, seem to skirt around some of the major issues or
supply wildly optimistic data. The 30% losses that the Advertisement is
talking about has nothing to do with power generation but about transmission
losses, how is the smart grid going to help in curbing transmission losses,
when often electricity has to be supplied from thousands of miles away? If
the smart grid cannot correct transmission losses then how is it going to
make more power available. The second strange thing
that I noticed about the advertisement is that it was a major computer
company that had put out the Ad, not a power utility. The
smart grid as it is at present envisioned is wildly optimistic in its
conjectures on what such a smart grid would cost to implement. An article in
'The Economist' entitled 'Building the smart grid' calculates a sum of
$50 billion dollars for nation wide implementation,
this estimate claims to be based on a survey carried out by PNNL. It will
more probably work out in the trillions to implement and maintain such a system.
The need of the day if a truly 'smart grid' is to be implemented is to go
back to basics. If there is one lesson that the computer age has taught us it
is that information should be handled step by step and bit by bit in order to
be effective. One of the major issues that the grid has to face is increased
power output in the future and one of the arguments put forward for the
implementation of a smart grid is that much of that increased output can be
supplied by renewable energy resources. So the first step should be to
identify what those resources are, how much power, intermittent or otherwise
can be generated from those resources, periods during which that power will
be available and lastly in which geographical location these sources of
renewable energy are situated. It is only when more or less exact figures of
these resources can be collated that anything approaching a 'smart grid' can
be put into place. It is when you can say "Right, I am going to get 30MW
from PV sources from this area during such and such hours of daylight and
another 50 MW from Concentrated solar power in that area from such and such a
time to such and such a time and yes wind mill power is available in these
locations during the following months and for so much time etc., that a
'smart grid' as envisioned will begin to make sense, let's have some real
figures. With these figures in mind or even reasonable projections of the
expected figures, it will be possible to get a realistic overview of what is
achievable and what is not. Much
has been said about educating the public about 'smart' usage of electrical
power. Is this optimism really justified? Can you imagine people going around
to peer at their smart meters to see how much power they are consuming, where
that power is coming from, whether it is a coal fired or a nuclear power
plant that is supplying the electricity, how much it costing them at that
time of day etc., I think there is cause for skepticism if such a scenario is
taken seriously. If the
truth be known, it is not really the efficiency of the grid that has to be
improved, true transmission losses approach 30% but then this is something
that the smart grid can't really solve, it is the power producing capacity of
the grid that really has to be addressed. If we think that implementation of
the 'smart grid' is going to increase power capacity, then we are in for a
big disappointment. As well say, why not implement 'fusion' energy as to say
implement the smart grid and solve all your power shortage problems. Yes, if
implemented using common sense rather than hyperbole and wildly unrealistic
scenarios, 'smart metering' could be a huge plus point. For instance scope
for improvement does exist in grid to grid communication and the use of GIS
systems. The potential for better more accurate metering for domestic and
commercial buildings also exists but to imply that this can only be
implemented by direct home to utility computer linkages is absurd, costly to
implement, increases security issues and will inevitably end up with the
consumer bearing the brunt of all these 'improvements' in the form of
increased cost. What good will looking at the 'smart meter' do then? |
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Readers Comments
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Date
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Comment
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Len Gould |
"Can you
imagine people going around to peer at their smart meters to see how much
power they are consuming, where that power is coming from, whether it is a
coal fired or a nuclear power plant that is supplying the electricity, how
much it costing them at that time of day etc" -- That is a repetition of
the oldest straw-man argument against real-time market pricing. The answer of
course is "No". I would then pose the question "Can you
imagine anyone foolish enough to propose such a system, not taking any
advantage of modern digital electronics and communications systems?" Oh,
wait, the author did. |
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Harry
Valentine |
High
electric power costs (i.e. market forces) can often encourage large numbers
of people to seek innovative means by which to reduce their electric power
bills. The problem of waste of energy begins when governments play Robin Hood
and force producers to provide electric power (to the residential market) at
lower costs . . . even subsidized costs. There almost always too much
expensive electric power available for sale and never enough cheap electric
power for mass consumption. Elected officials who can provide the latter may
be assured of re-election. |
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Bob Amorosi |
The author of
this article indirectly reveals why there is so much debate and confusion
about what a smart grid entails. Making more power
available to customers to accommodate future demand growth is just one of
several things that a smart grid is suppose to help
deal with. Of course smart grid cannot directly reduce transmission losses by
itself, nor can it create more power, but the point is adding many other
distributed smaller-scale power sources to the grid from renewable sources
will require much more automation of the grid itself to handle these sources
across a wide geographic area. And having a well designed smart grid will
permit adding many new smaller scale sources over time without the need to
define up front where and how many there will ultimately be. The use of interval
smart meters and utility-to-customer communications and is all about two main
issues. The first is using Time-Of-Use energy billing to encourage consumers
to load shift to off-peak hours, more commonly known as demand curve leveling
which has many advantages for the grid. The second is to promote conservation
and efficiency upgrades with all customers by empowering them with tools to
monitor their own energy use habits in real time. An extension of the
utility-to-customer communications would be to make available to all
customers real-time energy pricing as proposed in Len Gould's sophisticated
IMEUC market reform proposals described on this website. A substantial
portion of consumers would have a keen interest in automating their demand
responses in their residences to real-time pricing. It is hogwash to think
consumers would actually manually monitor their energy uses in real time, but
it would be easy with some consumer-friendly computer software and the
hardware tools inside their homes all linked to the grid through real-time
communications. If Len's IMEUC
reforms were implemented, many consumers would also have a keen interest in
choosing what particular generation source they buy electricity from, just
like we all currently enjoy when buying gasoline or food or any other
product. This has never been possible with electricity in the current
regulatory environment that utility companies must operate in. |
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Bob
Amorosi |
One
of the advantages of adding many more distributed smaller-scale generators to
the grid from renewable sources is that many can be located much closer to
customers than large central plants. This reduces the need for adding more
long-haul lossy transmission lines that would
otherwise be required if the added generation capacity was implemented only
by additional large central generators. A smart grid combined with adding
many distributed small-scale generators can therefore actually help to avoid
adding extra transmission losses to a grid. |
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Bob Amorosi |
Another major
development for the nation's electricity grid is the looming demands from
electric vehicle recharging. Virtually all automobile companies are starting
to introduce electric vehicles of some kind, and the most prevalent ones will
probably be Plug-in Hybrid types. It is wishful thinking to believe all
consumers will simply plug in to recharge at night when there is substantial generation
capacity available. Many consumers are likely to plug in as soon as they
return home from work in the afternoon during peak hours, particularly if
they need their vehicles again before the next morning. The power drawn by
an electric vehicle’s battery charger is substantial being at least hundreds
of watts, if not a few kilowatts for a fast charger. The potential for
massive increases in demand on parts of the grid during peak hours within the
next five years is sobering without a massive increase in generation
capacities. Another potential facet of smart grid is to help deal with this
looming crisis since the needed extra generators to deal with it could not be
brought on line fast enough even if their construction started today. |
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Len
Gould |
Actually,
Bob, I expect that low-efficiency simple-cycle Natural Gas turbines could be
installed fast enough to keep up with vehicle charging demands. One sobering
consideration is that any load-curve-leveling project, such as IMEUC or TOU mtering etc. act to hurt natural gas generation's market
share and favour large baseload
nuclear (in most of the developed world) or coal in the US. I'd expect
natural gas interests to be quite vocally opposed. |
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Bob Amorosi |
Len;
simple-cycle NG turbines are probably "off-the-shelf" or almost,
and so I can fully understand why they could be deployed relatively quickly.
My comment above about not being brought on line fast enough was thinking
mostly about the traditional large central nuke or coal plants. An extra note, you
and I and the rest of us in Just imagine for a
moment too those customers who cannot easily load shift to off-peak hours,
e.g. the local restaurant and many other business owners who must operate
during on-peak hours or starve. Their energy bills are going to jump
substantially because initial TOU rates will have an on-peak price around 50%
higher than our current flat energy rate. |
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Jerry
Watson |
First
where are you getting your information from? Transmission losses in the Of
course we are talking about the US with it massive infrastructure, many
developing countries do in fact have horrible line losses, over 20% is not
uncommon, I think sometimes we hear a worst case number and think it is
universally applicable. |
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Don
Hirschberg |
Thank you
Jerry Watson. I was prepairing to ask where this
30% loss business came from as I don't think before tonight I had seen
anything outside of the 3 to 10% range, ever, So I have been puzzled all
along by what wonderful things a smart grid would do for us. Puzzling too is why
this 30% figure has not been challenged by either the author nor in the first
sentences of comments of knowledgeable posters. I have not seen the
ad the author features. If I knew who'se it was I'd
write them a letter. |
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Bob
Amorosi |
Jerry
and Don, Points
well taken on T&D losses, but contrary to what is implied in this article
I don't think smart grid's proposed purpose is to somehow reduce losses in
any given T&D path, but rather by rerouting power flows automatically it
supposedly could help minimize their combined effects. Optimally
handling power outages and optimally handling many more distributed
smaller-scale generators on the grid in the future from renewable and other
sources IS one of the main purposes of smart grid. Transmission
line losses are a problem many physicists have been searching to find a
solution to over decades. The search for PRACTICAL room-temperature
superconductors has long been viewed as the potential holy grail to
revolutionize T&D in the electricity industry that could almost eliminate
line losses, but I have yet to see anything commercially viable come out of
that research since as far back as the 1970's. |
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Don
Hirschberg |
I could use
some education. What are the economic designed losses? There must be some
handy dandy rules of thumb for I^2*R losses per mile, or volts per mile
rather well established long before the first computers. Now I suppose every
line now is optimized by plugging numbers into a program. But what is the
program told to do? I live in the
middle of nowhere, yet within a hundred mile radius we have three significant
hydro plants, a nuclear plant and several coal burners. Two houses share a
22,000 v transformer so only house voltage goes more than about a hundred
feet. It would seem to me that unless the system is very badly designed that
there would be very little loss. So little, perhaps, that little could be
saved by a sophisticated smart system? Maybe a dumb
question but how far is the average user from a generating plant? I’ll take a
wild guess and say less than 50 miles. |
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