8.3.09 Dilip James, Inventor and Renewable Energy Consultant

Recently I saw an advertisement about the smart grid where a man poses the question:

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?

Comments:

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.

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.

An extra note, you and I and the rest of us in Ontario are all about to get put on TOU billing as the deadline is next year, and then just wait for the political fireworks it may unleash with the public. We will all not only get stuck with an extra fixed charge added to our utility bills to fund the smart meters, but many will accuse the whole TOU system as simply a way for the province to squeeze more money out of consumers, especially the majority of consumers who won't fully understand TOU billing without real-time feedback from their meters.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Someone on EP wrote many months ago, perhaps it was Jim Beyer, that the electrical energy flowing into a residential load in a typical city in North America originates from a generator no more than 300 or so miles away MAXIMUM. So your 50 miles or less may very well be a typical mean of the distance on average.

I also seem to recall reports years ago that say all combined T&D losses are no more than 4% or 5% in Ontario's grid as a whole.

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