Smart grids

Smart grid
• A smart grid is an electrical grid which includes a variety of
operational and energy measures including smart meters,
smart appliances, renewable energy resources, and energy
efficient resources. Electronic power conditioning and
control of the production and distribution of electricity are
important aspects of the smart grid.
• Roll-out of smart grid technology also implies a fundamental
re-engineering of the electricity services industry, although
typical usage of the term is focused on the technical
infrastructure.
Smart grid
The smart grid focuses on four main area:
• Generation
• Transmission
• Distribution
• Consumption
Features of the smart grid
The smart grid represents the full suite of current and
proposed responses to the challenges of electricity supply.
Because of the diverse range of factors there are numerous
competing taxonomies and no agreement on a universal
definition. Nevertheless, one possible categorization is given
here:
• Reliability
• Flexibility in network topology
• Efficiency
• Sustainability
• Market-enabling
Reliability
• The smart grid makes use of technologies such as state estimation
that improve fault detection and allow self-healing of the network
without the intervention of technicians. This will ensure more reliable
supply of electricity, and reduced vulnerability to natural disasters or
attack.
• Although multiple routes are touted as a feature of the smart grid, the
old grid also featured multiple routes. Initial power lines in the grid
were built using a radial model, later connectivity was guaranteed via
multiple routes, referred to as a network structure. However, this
created a new problem: if the current flow or related effects across
the network exceed the limits of any particular network element, it
could fail, and the current would be shunted to other network
elements, which eventually may fail also, causing a domino effect.
• The economic impact of improved grid reliability and resilience is the
subject of a number of studies.
Flexibility in network topology
• Next-generation transmission and distribution infrastructure will be
better able to handle possible bidirection energy flows, allowing for
distributed generation such as from photovoltaic panels on
building roofs, but also the use of fuel cells, charging to/from the
batteries of electric cars, wind turbines, pumped hydroelectric
power, and other sources.
• Classic grids were designed for one-way flow of electricity, but if a
local sub-network generates more power than it is consuming, the
reverse flow can raise safety and reliability issues. A smart grid
aims to manage these situations.
Efficiency
• Numerous contributions to overall improvement of the efficiency of
energy infrastructure are anticipated from the deployment of smart
grid technology, in particular including demand-side management,
for example turning off air conditioners during short-term spikes in
electricity price, reducing the voltage when possible on distribution
lines through Voltage/VAR Optimization (VVO), eliminating truck-
rolls for meter reading, and reducing truck-rolls by improved
outage management using data from Advanced Metering
Infrastructure systems.
• The overall effect is less redundancy in transmission and
distribution lines, and greater utilization of generators, leading to
lower power prices.
Efficiency
Load adjustment / Load balancing:
• The total load connected to the power grid can vary significantly over
time. Although the total load is the sum of many individual choices of
the clients, the overall load is not a stable, slow varying, increment of
the load if a popular television program starts and millions of
televisions will draw current instantly.
• Traditionally, to respond to a rapid increase in power consumption,
faster than the start-up time of a large generator, some spare
generators are put on a dissipative standby mode. A smart grid may
warn all individual television sets, or another larger customer, to
reduce the load temporarily (to allow time to start up a larger
generator) or continuously (in the case of limited resources). Using
mathematical prediction algorithms it is possible to predict how many
standby generators need to be used, to reach a certain failure rate.
• In the traditional grid, the failure rate can only be reduced at the cost
of more standby generators. In a smart grid, the load reduction by
even a small portion of the clients may eliminate the problem.
Efficiency
Peak curtailment / leveling and time of use pricing:
• To reduce demand during the high cost peak usage periods,
communications and metering technologies inform smart devices in
the home and business when energy demand is high and track how
much electricity is used and when it is used. It also gives utility
companies the ability to reduce consumption by communicating to
devices directly in order to prevent system overloads.
• Examples would be a utility reducing the usage of a group of electric
vehicle charging stations or shifting temperature set points of air
conditioners in a city. To motivate them to cut back use and perform
what is called peak curtailment or peak leveling, prices of electricity
are increased during high demand periods, and decreased during low
demand periods.
• It is thought that consumers and businesses will tend to consume
less during high demand periods if it is possible for consumers and
consumer devices to be aware of the high price premium for using
electricity at peak periods.
Sustainability
• The improved flexibility of the smart grid permits greater
penetration of highly variable renewable energy sources such as
solar power and wind power, even without the addition of energy
storage.
• Current network infrastructure is not built to allow for many
distributed feed-in points, and typically even if some feed-in is
allowed at the local (distribution) level, the transmission-level
infrastructure cannot accommodate it. Rapid fluctuations in
distributed generation, such as due to cloudy or windy weather,
present significant challenges to power engineers who need to
ensure stable power levels through varying the output of the more
controllable generators such as gas turbines and hydroelectric
generators. Smart grid technology is a necessary condition for
very large amounts of renewable electricity on the grid for this
reason.
Market-enabling
• The smart grid allows for systematic communication between
suppliers (their energy price) and consumers (their willingness-to-
pay), and permits both the suppliers and the consumers to be more
flexible and sophisticated in their operational strategies.
• Only the critical loads will need to pay the peak energy prices, and
consumers will be able to be more strategic in when they use energy.
Generators with greater flexibility will be able to sell energy
strategically for maximum profit, whereas inflexible generators such
as base-load steam turbines and wind turbines will receive a varying
tariff based on the level of demand and the status of the other
generators currently operating.
• The overall effect is a signal that awards energy efficiency, and
energy consumption that is sensitive to the time-varying limitations of
the supply. At the domestic level, appliances with a degree of energy
storage or thermal mass (such as refrigerators, heat banks, and heat
pumps) will be well placed to 'play' the market and seek to minimize
energy cost by adapting demand to the lower-cost energy support
periods.
Market-enabling
Demand response support:
• Demand response support allows generators and loads to interact in
an automated fashion in real time, coordinating demand to flatten
spikes. Eliminating the fraction of demand that occurs in these spikes
eliminates the cost of adding reserve generators, cuts wear and tear
and extends the life of equipment, and allows users to cut their
energy bills by telling low priority devices to use energy only when it
is cheapest.
• Currently, power grid systems have varying degrees of
communication within control systems for their high-value assets,
such as in generating plants, transmission lines, substations and
major energy users. In general information flows one way, from the
users and the loads they control back to the utilities. The utilities
attempt to meet the demand and succeed or fail to varying degrees.
• Demand response can be provided by commercial, residential loads,
and industrial loads.
Market-enabling
Platform for advanced services:
• As with other industries, use of robust two-way communications,
advanced sensors, and distributed computing technology will
improve the efficiency, reliability and safety of power delivery and
use. It also opens up the potential for entirely new services or
improvements on existing ones, such as fire monitoring and
alarms that can shut off power, make phone calls to emergency
services, etc.
Smart grid technology
The bulk of smart grid technologies are already used in other
applications such as manufacturing and telecommunications and
are being adapted for use in grid operations:
• Integrated communications
• Sensing and measurement
• Smart meters
• Phasor measurement units
• Distributed power flow control
• Smart power generation using advanced components
• Power system automation
Integrated communications
• Areas for improvement include: substation automation, demand
response, distribution automation, supervisory control and data
acquisition (SCADA) systems, energy management systems,
wireless mesh networks, power-line carrier communications or
fiber-optics.
• Integrated communications will allow for real-time control,
information and data exchange to optimize system reliability, asset
utilization, and security.
Integrated communications
• SCADA system monitoring power system:
Sensing and measurement
• Core duties are evaluating congestion and grid stability,
monitoring equipment health, energy theft prevention and control
strategies support.
• Technologies include: advanced microprocessor meters (smart
meters) and meter reading equipment, wide-area monitoring
systems, dynamic line rating (typically based on online readings
by Distributed temperature sensing combined with Real time
thermal rating (RTTR) systems), electromagnetic signature
measurement/analysis, time-of-use and real-time pricing tools,
advanced switches and cables, backscatter radio technology and
Digital protective relays.
Smart meter
• A smart meter is an electronic device that records consumption of
electric energy in intervals of an hour or less and communicates
that information at least daily back to the utility for monitoring and
billing.
• Smart meters enable two-way communication between the meter
and the central system. Unlike home energy monitors, smart meters
can gather data for remote reporting. Such an advanced metering
infrastructure (AMI) differs from traditional automatic meter reading
(AMR) in that it enables two-way communications with the meter.
• Communications from the meter to the network can be done via
fixed wired connections (such as power line communications) or via
wireless. In using wireless, one can opt for cellular communications
(which can be expensive), Wi-Fi (readily available), wireless ad hoc
networks over Wi-FI, wireless mesh networks, low power long range
wireless (LORA), ZigBee (low power low data rate wireless), Wi-
SUN (Smart Utility Networks), etc.
Smart meter
• smart meter based on
Open smart grid
protocol (OSGP) in use
in Europe that has the
ability to reduce load,
disconnect-reconnect
remotely, and interface
to gas and water
meters:
Phasor measurement unit
• A phasor measurement unit (PMU) is a device which measures
the electrical waves on an electricity grid using a common time
source for synchronization.
• Time synchronization allows synchronized real-time
measurements of multiple remote measurement points on the grid.
The resulting measurement is known as a synchrophasor.
• PMUs are considered to be one of the most important measuring
devices in the future of power systems. A PMU can be a dedicated
device or the PMU function can be incorporated into a protective
relay or other device.
Phasor measurement unit
Distributed power flow control
• Power flow control devices clamp onto existing transmission lines
to control the flow of power within.
• Transmission lines enabled with such devices support greater use
of renewable energy by providing more consistent, real-time
control over how that energy is routed within the grid.
• This technology enables the grid to more effectively store
intermittent energy from renewables for later use.
Smart power generation using advanced
components
• Smart power generation is a concept of matching electricity
generation with demand using multiple identical generators which
can start, stop and operate efficiently at chosen load,
independently of the others, making them suitable for base load
and peaking power generation.
• Matching supply and demand, called load balancing, is essential
for a stable and reliable supply of electricity. Short-term deviations
in the balance lead to frequency variations and a prolonged
mismatch results in blackouts. Operators of power transmission
systems are charged with the balancing task, matching the power
output of all the generators to the load of their electrical grid. The
load balancing task has become much more challenging as
increasingly intermittent and variable generators such as wind
turbines and photovoltaics are added to the grid, forcing other
producers to adapt their output much more frequently than has
been required in the past.
Smart power generation using advanced
components
Power system automation
• Power system automation enables rapid diagnosis of and precise
solutions to specific grid disruptions or outages.
• These technologies rely on and contribute to each of the other four
key areas. Three technology categories for advanced control
methods are: distributed intelligent agents (control systems),
analytical tools (software algorithms and high-speed computers)
and operational applications (SCADA, substation automation,
demand response, etc.).
Vehicle-to-grid
• Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) describes a system in which plug-in electric
vehicles, such as electric cars (BEV), plug-in hybrids (PHEV) or
hydrogen Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles (FCEV), communicate with
the power grid to sell demand response services by either
returning electricity to the grid or by throttling their charging rate.
• Vehicle-to-grid can be used with gridable vehicles, that is, plug-in
electric vehicles (BEV and PHEV), with grid capacity.
• Since at any given time 95 percent of cars are parked, the
batteries in electric vehicles could be used to let electricity flow
from the car to the electric distribution network and back. This
represents an estimated value to the utilities of up to $4,000 per
year per car.
Smart grid challenges
Major change usually entails substantial challenges and the smart
grid is no exception. There are major barriers to achieving smart grids:
• Financial Resources: The business case for a self-healing grid is
good, particularly if it includes societal benefits. But regulators will
require extensive proof before authorizing major investments based
heavily on societal benefits.
• Government Support: The industry may not have the financial
capacity to fund new technologies without the aid of government
programs to provide incentives to invest. The utility industry is
capital-intensive, but it has undergone hard times in the
marketplace and some utilities have impaired financial ratings.
• Compatible Equipment: Some older equipment must be replaced
as it cannot be retrofitted to be compatible with smart grid
technologies. This may present a problem for utilities and regulators
since keeping equipment beyond its depreciated life minimizes the
capital cost to consumers. Early retirement of equipment may
become an issue.
Smart grid challenges
• Speed of technology development: The solar shingle, the
basement fuel cell, and the chimney wind generator were
predicted 50 years ago as an integral part of the home of the
future. This modest historical progress will need to accelerate.
• Policy and regulation: Utility commissions frequently take a
parochial view of new construction projects. The state financing
the project may not always be the one benefiting most from it.
Unless an attractive return on smart grid investments is
encouraged, utilities will remain reluctant to invest in new
technologies.
• Cooperation: The challenge for big amount diverse utilities will be
the cooperation needed to install critical circuit ties and freely
exchange information to implement smart grid concepts.