The Smart Grid: Integrating rising demand & increased renewable energy into an aging and overburdened power grid

Last week I posted a blog about EmPower COO Greg Sach’s MIT Thesis on Smart Grid Design & Evolution.   This entry expands on that post with a little bit of background on where we stand right now and why we need to upgrade to a Smarter Grid.

The power grid in place in America today is still based on the plans that Thomas Edison constructed 120 years ago.  Energy demand has skyrocketed since then, and the antiquated power grid can hardly keep up!  Outages are becoming more common, power is lost in transmission, and inefficiencies in generation and distribution are costly.

Picture source: http://www.angelnexus.com/o/web/22672

Generating solar energy and monitoring it via SunPower’s Monitoring System is an example of a component of smart metering, an integral part of the future Smart Grid.  This monitoring system allows customers to see how much energy their system is producing in real-time on a display mounted inside the home, online via a web-based interface, and on-the-go via SunPower Monitoring apps for iPhone and iPod. By knowing electricity production, system owners can optimize their energy savings. Additionally, SunPower dealers like EmPower can remotely monitor the performance of all of our customer’s system’s, allowing for identification and correction of issues even before the customer notices a problem.

Picture source: http://us.sunpowercorp.com/residential/products-services/services/monitoring.php

With the smart grid of the future, people will not only be able to monitor how much their solar system is producing, but also how much electricity the entire building is using and real-time energy prices. This transparency allows residents to adjust their usage based on needs and costs.

To read more about the design of the smart grid, check out my previous post with the link to COO Greg Sach’s MIT Thesis on Smart Grid Technology.

EmPower COO Greg Sachs Graduates MIT, Publishes Smart Grid Design & Evolution Thesis

Having recently graduated from the System Design & Management (SDM) program at MIT, EmPower’s Chief Operating Officer Greg Sachs published his thesis on Next Generation Smart Grid Systems.  SDM is a joint program with the Sloan School of Management and Engineering School at MIT, where a core concept is that of defining “System Architectures”, which provide a toolset for designing and optimizing complex systems.  Greg’s program emphasis was on the technical and business aspects of renewable energy generation and power distribution.

The following is the abstract of his thesis, and you can download the whole report by clicking here.

Greg Sachs: A System Architect’s Basic Guide to Understanding & Designing Next Generation Grid Systems

A strong and growing desire exists, throughout society, to consume electricity from clean and renewable energy sources, such as solar, wind, biomass, geothermal, and others. Due to the intermittent and variable nature of electricity from these sources, our current electricity grid is incapable of collecting, transmitting, and distributing this energy effectively.

The “Smart Grid” is a term which has come to represent this ‘next generation’ grid, capable of delivering, not only environmental benefits, but also key economic, reliability and energy security benefits as well. Due to the high complexity of the electricity grid, a principle based System Architecture framework is presented as a tool for analyzing, defining, and outlining potential pathways for infrastructure transformation. Through applying this framework to the Smart Grid, beneficiaries and stakeholders are identified, upstream and downstream influences on design are analyzed, and a succinct outline of benefits and functions is produced.

The first phase of grid transformation is establishing a robust communications and measurement network. This network will enable customer participation and increase energy efficiency through smart metering, real time pricing, and demand response programs.

As penetration of renewables increases, the high variability and uncontrollability of additional energy sources will cause significant operation and control challenges. To mitigate this variability reserve margins will be adjusted and grid scale energy storage (such as compressed air, flow batteries, and plugin hybrid electric vehicles or PHEV’s) will begin to be introduced. Achieving over 15% renewable energy penetration marks the second phase of transformation.

The third phase is enabling mass adoption, whereby over 40% of our energy will come from renewable sources. This level of penetration will only be achieved through fast supply and demand balancing controls and large scale storage. Robust modeling must be developed to test various portfolio configurations.