Thoughts on Smart Grid Challenges/Opportunities

When researching the term Smart Grid it is apparent there is not one coherent definition. It seems Smart Grid describes a concept in a variety of ways, and is often compared to the Internet in potential pervasiveness and usefulness. However, the Internet has a distinctive description and a foundation in the definition of the TCP/IP protocol. NIST has taken on the challenge to coordinate the effort of defining interoperability standards analog to a TCP/IP stack, and a cornerstone definition is the GWAC 8 stack.

One observation can be made that energy consumers in their own are getting very sophisticated and energy optimized, however, from a utility view, these attributes are not accessible. The opportunity, Smart Energy Consumers need to be enabled to connect to the utility. Bridging the communication gap between Utilities and Energy Consumers seems paramount. Enabling limited load controls by the utility has potentially substantial benefits. For example it would allow limited load shedding which is probably a key feature to make the grid more effective.

The aggressive build out of Renewable Energy Sources will potentially challenge the current grid operations significantly. There will be needs to balance load and generation as they are typically not matched. The location of generation and consumption can be in very different parts of the grid too. Balancing of base load generation by coal, oil and nuclear with Wind, Solar and Biomass will be needed as it challenges the current ecosystem. Possibly new financial models for utilities will emerge. It is quiet possible that Green Energy will be more valuable than traditional Energy, therefore the access to Green Energy will be a key driver.

There are many open issues and an industry acceptable implementation has to be developed. This needs a lot of definitions, research; knowledge will be generated in collaboration and needs to be distributed. The most exiting part is the journey we are on today, This is the time to be active, be part of it to form the future of our grid.