Musings: the Smart Grid ?
CounterRotatingProps
Posts: 1,132
Have you·given any thought to the micro applications related to the Smart Grid?
Just finished some research on patents, start-up companies, and US gov. NIST and DoE grant awards.
There's a lot going on right now ... and I see some niche markets there ·...
Any Thoughts?
EDIT: BTW is anyone interested in some of the patent links?
·
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
Post Edited (CounterRotatingProps) : 11/27/2009 10:05:59 PM GMT
Just finished some research on patents, start-up companies, and US gov. NIST and DoE grant awards.
There's a lot going on right now ... and I see some niche markets there ·...
Any Thoughts?
EDIT: BTW is anyone interested in some of the patent links?
·
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
Post Edited (CounterRotatingProps) : 11/27/2009 10:05:59 PM GMT
Comments
In some cases, our only protection for our national infrastructure is the fact that all the parts and pieces are NOT connected and therefore can't be cascaded by a single natural or man-made disaster.
I just worry that in our rush to make things like the national power grid smarter, we'll neglect the fact that doing so could make it more vulnerable to attack or failure from a natural disaster.
Duffer
@SRLM - indeed! One of the areas of intensifying efforts is in decentralized power generation, the so-called microgrids. Breaking up power sources into smaller chunks is both a boon and bane - for precisely the reasons Duffer mentions. Assume for a minute that we have a Smart and decentrialized grid system. Power is generated from many local sources contributing into the 'big grid'.
A massive communications failure would still allow many of these sources to work locally and autonomously - and they could still deliver the raw power into the bigger grid. The result of any kind of disaster is that the "Smart" grid reverts to being a "Dumb" grid. However, even the dumb decentralized version is an improvement over the exsisting centralized dumb systems we have now. Many people in Florida have small backup generators ready during hurricane season. These are usually just big enough to run one small A.C. unit and a refridge. If the generators were augmented with other alternative sources, combined into pooled resources, and intelligent, then the backup systems improve their failover characteristics.
One of the things I found interesting was that NIST has asked for the creation of an Internet-based smart grid protocol. Although we all know that the Internet "breaks" all the time (so how the heck would it *really* survive a nuke attack ? [noparse]:)[/noparse] - it still is the best, redundant comm. transport layer we have. I think this could work well, if the systems were set up in concentric circles, with each power-generating 'cell' in the center of their own set of ever expanding circles. Each overlap of a circle is a dynamic grid node.
Frankly, I'm much more concerned about political vested interests hampering these efforts than I am about attacks or natural disasters. Again, in Florida which is where I live and am watching what's happening, there is much "talk" about doing these things. But behind the scenes, in the halls of power (pun intended), the entrenched interests have already dig in. The real problem is that some of this stuff is so legally arcane and bureaucratically technical that many of us in the general public will remain clueless that we are being chumped already before the "green" future has begun. Here's several examples, translated from bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo to plain-as-dirt effects:
Almost everywhere, when you buy power, you buy it "retail" and your power company buys or generates it "wholesale".
In Florida, as in many states, we are allowed to do 'reverse metering' - your meter runs backwards when you generate power back into the grid. Before the 'green' ideas started to gain attention, those very rare individuals who were reversing their meters received payment (or credit) from their utility company at retail prices. Once the powers that be got wind of the potential of customers generating their own power - and having to pay them for it, they began quietly clamping down, closing doors - while talking up the 'green revolution' ... now when you are able to reverse your meter, you will be paid the lowest *wholesale* amount. You have to think about this a while to see how screwed up that really is.
Two other, not so subtle, examples: in my city, you can generate a max of only 10 to 25 kW per physical address. And, because of "zoning restrictions" (very new ones I might add [noparse]:)[/noparse] you cannot put a "solar farm" in your large backyard, your big empty lot, some communial property - even if you get all the neighbors in a one mile radius to sign a petition to do so.
It's like the old days all over - remember how much the "Ma Bells", the big telecomms complained that cell phones would make landlines too expensive yada yada ... the big power co's are in the same position.
Feeling like an aging hippy radical, here's an old phrase that could use some resurgence:
"Power from the People!"
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
What's needed are not "microgrids", in the sense that term is typically used. What's needed is "Distributed Generation" and "Nodal Power Management". With the current grid, as well as the proposals for "Smart Grid 1.0", I could take out an entire control region and there's not a lot anyone could do about it. Fortunately, I'm one of the good guys (or gals, as the case may be for me). The problem with large control regions is that they don't scale well, and some parts of the country already have plenty of problems with transmission constraints. That's all the talk about "aging infrastructure" -- problems getting power from "A" to "B". The problem with microgrids is they are just too much grief to get to work together. Hell, they are problems getting themselves to work. And that's where nodal is best -- because it isn't a bunch of little grids, it's a grid, broken up into nodes -- smaller "grids". Problems in a node don't take out the entire control region, the node just goes off and does its thing then gets back with the program a little while later.
As regards the situation in Florida -- I had that happen to me. TXU Power was paying me net for power -- KWh for KWh -- then installed "smart meters" and ripped me off to the tune of 665KWh, which is a few months of electricity for me. Yeah, I use about 4500KWh a year from the utility, I'm extremely miserly with electricity (and still have a great standard of living, including an electric motorcycle, wide screen TVs around the house, computers, etc.) Fortunately for me, I own a company that makes software to manage renewable energy systems, so as soon as I realized I was being ripped off, I started using my own products. Thus ended the ripoff. They'd have gotten me for 1,500KWh or more if I'd not turned them off. And believe me -- 1MWh is a LOT of electricity, and they got me for more than half of that. Which hurts.
The thing that makes the Internet work (and I have about 30 years in high tech -- most of those on the Internet somewhere or other) is that it is self-routing. There isn't some kind of pattern, like concentric circles or overlapping polygons. Nor is there a single central authority. It's "whoever can talk to someone, says so". And that's what nodal power is about. If my neighborhood can share power with yours, we do if we need to. If there's a 7200 volt line that runs down my street, and some neighborhood lost their 7200 volt source, it reconnects itself to mine. Of course, that assumes the other neighborhood can survive long enough to realize it lost power, find who has power, then make the connection. But it will be much better than today when a blown up transformer takes hours, instead of milliseconds, to correct.