When the power goes out, electric utility customers want it back, and fast. Now it’s possible for a “smart” or “self-healing” electronic grid to reduce customers’ hours without power to just a few minutes. But adopting this technology is more complicated than flipping a switch. Keep reading →
As consumers we have an abundance of choices. We can choose among competing stores selling competing products. If we don’t want to drive to the store, we can go online and purchase what we need and have it delivered to our door.
We have choices among phone and Internet service providers, and choices among devices competing to provide phone and Internet services. We’ve come to take for granted choices among competing providers for just about every product and service we consume. Keep reading →
U.S. electricity regulators face historic challenges over the next 20 years in helping to guide an estimated $2 trillion in investment to renew or replace aging infrastructure, ensure industry compliance with increasingly stringent environmental regulations, and adopt smart-grid technologies, according to a new report from the sustainability think-tank Ceres.
With the enormous investment by both investor-owned and public utilities, regulators should take a new approach to managing the risks of both the costs of new infrastructure and the time it takes to install it, the report said Thursday. Keep reading →
When talking about energy and power generation today, it’s hard to avoid the topic of smart grids and intelligent metering systems. But the subject can seem somewhat nebulous and perhaps idealistic without hard numbers that put things in perspective. That is exactly what the US Energy Information Administration does.
The EIA maintains granular smart meter data that includes the total number of installations, who has them and more. At the end of 2010, 663 utilities had over 20 million advanced metering infrastructure installations, which accounts for about 6% of the total current US population. The lion’s share of these installations are at the residential level. Keep reading →
The charging cord for the Tesla Model S electric car
There is a hidden barrier to electric vehicles (EV) adoption – our electric grid. EVs could significantly increase peak demand and thus impact grid reliability. AMI and demand response technologies are often promoted as the solution for this uptick in peak demand. But we also need to look at other, grid-based solutions to enable broader adoption of EVs. Here are a few reasons why: Keep reading →
Most people don’t know what goes on behind the scenes when a power blackout occurs. This informative video illustrates exactly how a real-life extreme weather event was handled by mid-continent transmission company ITC.
On April 26, 2009, high winds in Michigan blew down 40 utility poles, which then caused two major transmission lines to “trip out.” The video follows the power restoration process step-by-step and includes footage from inside the control room. Keep reading →
In today’s interconnected energy world, it’s not easy for islands and remote communities, cut off from the ready energy supply of big grids, pipelines and superhighways. Witness the international drama last winter when Nome, Alaska became ice-locked and only secured fuel because of an elaborate sea effort by Russia and the US.
Dependent on the outside world for fossil fuels, places like Nome face not only shortages, but also sky-high energy prices. Some residents of Nome spend 45% of their income on energy. Similarly, Hawaiians pay more than twice as much for electricity as Californians. Keep reading →
Smart grid technology benefits everyone from utilities to consumers and a business case can be made for the large capital investment required to get us there.
That’s the message eMeter Co-Founder and CTO, Larsh Johnson gave Breaking Energy during a recent interview. Energy and infrastructure giant Siemens acquired eMeter in January 2012. Keep reading →
In 2010 and 2011, Smart Grid News participated in five separate “future of the smart grid” workshops organized by three different groups. We also conducted more than four dozen interviews with utility CEOs and CIOs. Those executives and experts made these nine predictions about the forces that will be driving the smart grid’s future:
1. Diverging demographics. We will have an increasingly diverse population with strong geographic, gender, generational, income and aspirational differences, with each segment expecting to “have it my way.” Keep reading →
As utilities generate more electricity from natural gas, the potential is emerging for freak weather or other events to cause problems for both delivery systems and create a cascading regional disaster, industry officials and regulators concluded in a “stress test scenario” played out in Washington, DC this past Sunday.
Planning to avoid such events, in which problems in the gas system aggravate problems in the electric system and vice-versa, is complicated by the two energy systems’ significantly different regulatory structures, officials said. Keep reading →
