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Beyond the challenge of measuring results, the smart grid raises questions about national security, says Bob Gilligan, GE's vice president for transmission and distribution. "We hear a lot of concerns about cyberterrorism and attacks on our energy infrastructure," he says. "As we talk about bringing more technology into the grid, providing more connections to the energy infrastructure, there are escalating concerns about protecting that infrastructure."
Gilligan adds that the technology raises serious privacy concerns as well. "The major concern is that folks don't want to be inundated with telemarketing calls associated with their usage behavior," he says. "There's also some concern about what they're doing being known minute by minute."
The massive amount of data generated by smart-grid technology could itself pose a practical problem. Right now, a utility with five million meters has about 30,000 devices for monitoring the grid. As the smart grid develops, that number could increase a thousandfold, with each device conveying a thousand times as much information as one of its counterparts does now, says Erik Udstuen, a general manager at GE Fanuc Intelligent Platforms. Though so much data may be difficult to process, it could also create opportunities for entrepreneurs to develop new monitoring applications, especially if open standards are developed.
Consumers needn't brace themselves for changes right away; it could take a decade to implement variable pricing. Meanwhile, the grid can be improved in ways that won't affect customers directly, such as reducing the amount of energy wasted in getting power from generators to consumers: 7 to 10 percent is often lost, and that figure can reach 20 or 30 percent during periods of peak demand. Meanwhile, smart meters and appliances that allow variable pricing will cost billions to develop and could take a decade to install.
Eventually, however, the smart grid could make the supply of electricity more efficient and reliable, and it could help reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by promoting renewable technologies and reducing overall power consumption. "In the long run," says James Gallagher, a senior vice president at the New York City Development Corp, "it will lead to lower rates."
A consortium including IBM has built a system that makes more of existing infrastructure.
But some consumers, concerned about rising prices and privacy, would rather their electricity meters stayed dumb.
Well, there's time to complain and there's time to build. But things are changing. some projects I think are interesting from a open-source / community side:
international residential renewable PPA:
http://www.solarnetwork.net/
open-source EV:
http://tumanako.net/
group discounts on solar systems:
http://1bog.org/
Home Automation Network:
http://osgug.ucaiug.org/utilityami/openhan/default.aspx
all pretty cool stuff...
Hi again jwgorman,
I just had the insight that it is actually DOE that is calling the shots. Are those projects better off with a government imposed dead-end inflexible architecture, just to extend the useful life of the IOUs-AF, or with a valuable and flexible global competitive architecture, such as the EWPC-AF that follows Silicon Valley life cycle?
With the above insight in mind, please take a look also to the EWPC article The Deadly Sin of State Regulators on the Smart Grid (please hit the hyperlink on the left) to get a better idea of the dead-end.
Do you know what opportunities do your projects face under that reality?
Good luck!
What most analysts and commentators are missing is that the Smart Grid discussion is focused entirely on the Electric Utilities monitoring/reporting, managing and controlling power use TO the consumer/companies.
What is not being discussed is what is being made available to the home Owner to Monitor/Control and Manage their individual devices in the home. Key here is providing both In Home and Remote Access too, Programming of and control of individual devices. This to not only include the electric power devices(ThermoStats/Lighting/Appliances) but also other Home Automation Systems (Water Meters/Video Surveillance/Security and Entry Systems). All these require some form of management and the consumer needs to control each.
This is being addressed nicely today.
People need to look at what a small firm called In2Networks is doing with their Internet Communication Modulse (ICM'S). They address all the mentioned HA devices and allow remote monitoring/reporting/alerts and controls of each.
Jim A.
Service provider
jacomo, you've said exactly what I wanted to, thanks. this is not some kind of system that only the electricity providers can achieve, it is completely available to the consumer. I think however, not everyone is going to be interested in setting up a system by themselves, and that's why you need service companies to provide the kind systems to do achieve it - those again can be independent entities using a variety of tools. once you throw cheap PV and PPA organizations and free and open-source software supported by an active development community into the mix, there's a lot of possibilities. those are still missing, but they're on the way I think.
Yes! You are both correct that those parts of the system will be required to get the whole system working properly. I think we could call those the little smart grid challenges that can be though to be engineering technology jobs.
However, I am writing about energy policy, the big smart grid challenges, which is what makes the system work properly as a whole. This ones can be though to be a socio-technical architecting job.
The century old energy policy of the Investor Owned Utilities Architecture Framework has become a huge mistake dead end. To get introduced into the results of the architecting job, please take a look at the EWPC article Strong Evidence of Why Utilities as We Know Them Will Fail.
Manufacturing in the United States is in trouble. That's bad news not just for the country's economy but for the future of innovation.
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jwgorman
15 Comments
a social smart grid
the problem with the way the smart grid is currently being sold is the same way electricity is sold - handed down from high by these monolithic companies. We know from many other topologies that have rolled out that you need to build communities before you have any software success. It's all about opt-in and user control. In our opinion, it not only is going to be open standards, but it's going to be open-source that defines the successful smart grid. I want an API that I can write to, with transparent code I can change if I want to, to design "energy schemes" that I can share with a community. Think facebook meets the grid - security, trust, reliability is not going to come from general electric dropping some nifty but closed-source devices in their GE ovens, it's going to come from a group of participating technologists who have a trust between themselves. People are going to download their power maven friend's energy scheme because they trust that person more than some big company who's trying to essentially up the bill or at least their margin one way or another. Plus, this smart-grid technology is all over the place already, it's not rocket science. there is very robust home automation software now - it's just a matter of time before a leading FOSS framework takes root. plus, making your own electricity with PV is already happening in a giant way, so it's not just the software that's going to fragment - it's actual power.
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javs
97 Comments
Re: a social smart grid
Hello jwgorman,
You are right. There is a need to change the Investor Owned Utilities Architecture Framework (IOUs-AF) that served us very well before 1970, but that became obsolete and increasly costly after that time. An architecture flaw introduced in the Energy Policy Act of 1992, has made necessary a series of incremental extensions on the IOUs-AF, to extend its useful life while generating a huge legacy. The Smart Grid is the latest incremental extension, in which the business model of IOUs winning cases to the regulator is kept, will lead to a billion of dollars value destruction on early obsolescence to the general public.
The Electricity Without Price Control (EWPC) Architecture Framework (EWPC-AF) has emerged to replace the IOUs-AF, introducing business model competition to several market segments. To see an introductory example of EWPC-AF, please take a look at the most recent article How Secretary Chu can Deliver a Win-Win, Big Deal Outcome at the Global Sustainability Game, which has 10 references and so far 11 comments.
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sanamare
2 Comments
Re: a social smart grid
you are soooo right.. let's have another synposium to discuss smart-grids and perhaps micro-grids, etc.?!!
Amare'
Phoenix Communities, Inc
amare@phoenixcommunities.org
347-365-8585
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javs
97 Comments
Strong & Smart Grid
Thank you sanamare,
There is actually no need for more debate. There is a need for a Strong & Smart Grid. This is a comment I submitted under the article "Smart Grid or Strong Grid? Comment on Ken Maize," by Robert Michaels, posted on July 8, 2009, in MasterResource: A free-market energy blog:
I love the concept of the Strong Grid, as it fits nicely with the Electricity Without Price Controls (EWPC) Architecture Framework (EWPC-AF) that has emerged to replace the Investor Owned Utilities (IOUs) Architecture Framework (IOUs-AF).
This is how it fits. The Smart Grid is based on the policy: economy first, system performance second. The strong Grid is based on system performance first, economy second.
A Strong Grid will result in a simple, not simplistic, power industry, which can be divided into two highly cohesive systems that are lightly coupled and that mutually reinforce each other. The systems are a primary regulated power service transportation system and a secondary open market commercialization business system. That is my key discovery.
Please go to the EWPC Blog (my website) to learn about the Greek Tragedy that will cost the American ratepayers and/or taxpayers billions of dollars.
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