Smart Grid Introduction
Smart Meter Expert Consultant Knowledge Series
Critical Information from the World of Smart Grid / Smart Meter
The Smart Grid: An Introduction
How a smarter grid works as an enabling engine for our economy, our environment and our future.
Section One: Introduction. We don’t have much time.
Our nation’s electric power infrastructure that has served us so well for so long – also known as “the grid” – is rapidly running up against its limitations. Our lights may be on, but systemically, the risks associated with relying on an often overtaxed grid grow in size, scale and complexity every day. From national challenges like power system security to those global in nature such as climate change, our near-term agenda is formidable. Some might even say history-making.
Fortunately, we have a way forward.
There is growing agreement among federal and state policymakers, business leaders, and other key stakeholders, around the idea that a Smart Grid is not only needed but well within reach. Think of the Smart Grid as the internet brought to
our electric system.
A tale of two timelines
There are in fact two grids to keep in mind as our future rapidly becomes the present. The first – we’ll call it “a smarter grid” – offers valuable technologies that can be deployed within the very near future or are already deployed today. The second – the Smart Grid of our title – represents the longer-term promise of a grid remarkable in its intelligence and impressive in its scope, although it is universally considered to be a decade or more from realization. Yet given how a single “killer application” – e-mail – incited broad, deep and immediate acceptance of the internet, who is to say that a similar killer app in this space won’t substantially accelerate that timetable? In the short term, a smarter grid will function more efficiently, enabling it to deliver the level of service we’ve come to expect more affordably in an era of rising costs, while also offering considerable societal benefits – such as less impact on our environment. Longer term, expect the Smart Grid to spur the kind of transformation that the internet has already brought to the way we live, work, play and learn.
A smarter grid applies technologies, tools and techniques available now to bring knowledge to power – knowledge capable of making the grid work far more efficiently...
- Ensuring its reliability to degrees never before possible.
- Maintaining its affordability.
- Reinforcing our global competitiveness.
- Fully accommodating renewable and traditional energy sources.
- Potentially reducing our carbon footprint.
- Introducing advancements and efficiencies yet to be envisioned.
Transforming our nation’s grid has been compared in significance with building the interstate highway system or the development of the internet. These efforts, rightly regarded as revolutionary, were preceded by countless evolutionary steps. Envisioned in the 1950s, the Eisenhower Highway System was not completed until the early 1980s. Similarly, the internet’s lineage can be directly traced to the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) of the U.S. Department of Defense in the 60s and 70s, long before its appearance as a society-changing technology in the 80s and 90s.
In much the same way, full implementation of the Smart Grid will evolve over time. However, countless positive steps are being taken today, organizations energized and achievements realized toward reaching that goal. You will learn about some of them here.
The purpose of this is to give readers – in plain language – a fix on the current position of the Smart Grid and its adoption. You will learn what the Smart Grid is – and what it is not. You will get a feel for the issues surrounding it, the challenges ahead, the countless opportunities it presents and the benefits we all stand to gain.
Remember life before e-mail? With every passing day, fewer and fewer people do. With the appropriate application of ingenious ideas, advanced technology, entrepreneurial energy and political will, there will also come a time when you won’t remember life before the Smart Grid.