The Smart Grid Advantages

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

In the past decade our society has been increasingly digitalized, we are dependent on electricity more than ever before and this need will be doubled over the twenty coming years. Our need for a new electricity cleaner resources, monitoring systems, and network architectures is increasing.

An integrated high performance, highly reliable, scalable, and secure communications network is critical for the effective deployment and operation of the next-generation electricity systems starting from the generation of electric power, to its transmission, and its distribution systems—known as "smart grids"[1].

In this context, Smart grid can be considered as a combination of the electric power infrastructure and communications infrastructure. New information communication and networking technologies will simplify an improved controlling of the available assets and future smart grid deployment.

In this paper, we will start by describing the issues with the existing grid, and introducing smart grid keys features, technologies, market segments, potential impacts, perspectives and challenges.

Smart GRID: An Overview

The worldwide electric power infrastructure has served us so well for a century or more known as "the grid", it is now promptly working against its limitations. Too many risks are associated with depending on an overloaded grid mature in size, scale and complexity every day. Several challenges are to face like power system safety and security, its impacts on nature such as climate change and global worming that we should solve in the near future [2].

II.1. Issues with existing grid

The grid as it stands today has multiple risks and challenges to overcome; we are relying on a centrally scheduled, controlled and organized infrastructure made basically before the era of microprocessors that bounds our flexibility and locates us at menace on numerous critical fronts [4]:

The tremendous evolution in peak demand for electricity caused by population growth, more electric appliances such as air conditioners, computers, TVs, bigger refrigerators, washing machines, microwaves etc., has surpassed transmission progress by almost 25% every year.

In order to innovate and renewal the existing grid billions of dollars should be invested – well in USA for example investing on research and development in this area is between the lowest of all businesses and industries [2], in realty the grid is struggling to keep up.

The grid was designed on the 20th century requirements, so obviously it cannot deal with the 21st century needs, such as energy efficiency, environmental impacts, and customer choice. Back in the mid nighties expending the grid and keeping lights on was the only concern for the grid.

The reliability issue is the most important point of consideration when talking about the electric grid, over the past 40 years there have been five massive blackouts only in USA [2] .Those blackouts are happening due to the mechanical switches slow response time [5], an absence of computerized analytics, a poor visibility and a lack of situational responsiveness on the part of grid operators. This issue of reliability has negative implications on different industry segments as plant production, perishable food spoiling, traffic lights, and credit card transactions and so on. So the results of even a short local grid blackout could cost millions of dollars.

The efficiency issue at handling peak load and energy savings, in fact the new smart grid could have brilliant results on world economy. The energy savings coming from grid efficiency can exclude the greenhouse gas emissions and fuel from 53 million cars, if only the grid were just 5% more competent [3].

Security issues: Repetitive blackouts that have occurred in the last decades leave the society open to attacks, In fact, the interdependencies of many grid modules and components in the actual-centralized structure- can cause a domino effect – a cascading chain of disasters that could carry all finance systems, banks, traffic, communications, and security systems among others to a whole halt.

Environment /climate change issues: From all points of view the grid as it still today cause too much harm to our environment and threatens us all. For example, The United States has only 4% of the world’s population and produces 25% of its greenhouse gases [2]. Half of its electricity production is still produced by using coal, a rich electric source but a major provider to global warming. In order to reduce carbon production and help improve the global environment, by using cleaner, renewable sources of energy like wind, solar and geothermal that must be integrated into the grid. However, without the right enabling technologies standards connecting them to the grid, their prospective will not be totally recognized and utilized.

II.2. What is Smart Grid?

Our electrical grid is obsolete, and demand for energy is beating the supply. The smart grid makes over our electrical system into a modern network that empowers utilities and consumers to modernize how we generate, produce and consume energy. Smart grids carry out electricity from providers to customers using digital technology to save energy, decrease prices and amplify trustworthiness and reliability. Such a modernized electricity network is being supported by many countries as a way to report power objectivity and global warming concerns.

The EISA of 2007 (Energy Independence and Security Act) [8] guides federal and state agencies to implement projects and programs that progress the operation of the Smart Grid. EISA describes the Smart Grid as the transformation and upgrading of the USA electricity transmission and distribution system in order to preserve a reliable and safe electrical energy infrastructure that can encounter upcoming peak demand [7].

II.3. Smart Grid Advantages

In near time, the smart grid will function more efficiently than the existing grid, delivering different layer of services that we are expecting and more in an affordable, safe and secure way in an era of growing costs, while also offering important common benefits – such as fewer impacts on our environment.

In fact, Smart grid is a mixture of various technologies. By rational use of diverse technologies, smart grid can offer several economic potential and environmental benefits such as [8]:

Enhanced Reliability

Advanced asset operation

Improved integration of plug-in PHEVs (hybrid electric vehicles) and renewable energy

Reduced operational costs for utilities

Bigger productivity and preservation

Lower greenhouse gas (GHG) and other emissions

Smart grid key features

The way electricity is supplied and consumed today will be revolutionized by the development of smart grids. Smart grids are supported by the latest control and monitoring systems, communication and information technologies emergence. They offer the flexibility, productivity and portability needed to handle the expanded power generation, rising demand, fluctuating use patterns and gradually stretched transmission and distribution networks.

They also give a high level of control over energy networks and that’s important to decrease wasteful energy use and incorporating small, diversified generators into the grid. Smart grids will also play a significant role in falling down greenhouse gas emissions [12].

In fact, among smart grid features we can identify the following key features as the most significant:

Adaptive

The smart grid decentralized generation infrastructure is expanding to include large-scale offshore wind. A significant proportion of power will come from small generators – biomass, solar photovoltaic, onshore wind, combined heat and power, and evolving technologies like wave energy.  At the same time, energy-hungry use outlines are developing with the introduction of electric vehicles and heat pumps, for instance. Challenges include coordinating energy from various sources to iron out flows and provide power of a reliable quality. Smart grids can adapt to all types of generation.

Integrated and predictive

The incorporation of communication, security and control technologies allows data to be transferred and handled immediately. This gives communication and supply control rooms an active state of how networks are behaving in real time. There can be large differences in supply and demand, with excess in one part of the network and a unavailability in another. Smart grid communication and control technologies enable electricity to be reallocated to realize better power equilibrium across the grid.

Interactive

Customers will have exceptional control over their energy consumption, also with several environmental and financial profits. Smart meters will apply flexible prices: at agreed thresholds or when demand is on its peak, the unit cost of energy will grow up, encouraging customers to decrease consumption. 

Optimized and self-healing

Operators will be capable of choosing the most economical path to route energy from supply source to point of demand and overload in the transmission and distribution system should be prevented. If a line is disconnected from the system the smart grid will find another route. The actual grids monitoring and restoring is all manual. Smart grids will be automated, creating repair of supply quicker and safer.

Furthermore, smart grid has improved self-management and self-healing capacity. Using real-time monitoring, complications can be robotically noticed and replied to. With the integration of micro grids, involved areas can be quarantined from the main networks preventing disturbance of the whole system.

Intelligent

The smart grid has the ability of sensing system overloads and redirecting power to avoid or decrease a probable outage; of working self-reliantly when circumstances necessitate resolve faster than humans can respond…and supportively in arranging the goals of utilities, customers and controllers.

Efficient

The smart grid is capable of meeting bigger consumer request without extending the network or adding infrastructure.

Accommodating

The smart grid is tolerant to energy coming from different virtually any fuel sources including solar and wind as simply and obviously as coal and natural gas; able of incorporating any and all enhanced concepts and technologies as energy storage technologies, for example.

Motivating

The smart grid is capable of enabling real-time communication between the customer and utility so consumers can adapt their power consumption founded on specific favorites and choices, like price and environmental concerns

Opportunistic

The smart grid is capable creating new markets opportunities by means of its ability to exploit on plug-and-play innovation appliances.

Reliable and Quality-focused

The smart grid has the ability of delivering the energy essential quality without disturbances and disruptions or stoppages in order to power our gradually digital economy and all electric appliances such as computers and data centers to make it run.

Resilient

The smart grid is increasingly resistant to attack and natural disasters due to its decentralized infrastructure and reinforced with Smart Grid security protocols.

"Green"

The smart grid is capable of slowing the spread of global climate change and contributing to create a genuine path toward significant environmental improvement.

Smart grid key technologies

According to (NETL) the National Energy Technology Laboratory, five key technologies area have been identified in order to modernize the grid. These categories are described as following [13]:

Integrated communications:

It consist of connecting constituents to create an open architecture for real-time information monitoring and control, permitting each part of the grid to both ‘talk’ and ‘listen’.

However, the implementation of integrated communications is a crucial need that must be solved in basis phase, mandatory by the other key technologies and vital to the modernize power grid.

Integrated communications will create an active, interactive super infrastructure for real-time information and power interchange, giving users the opportunity to interact with numerous smart electronic devices in an adapted system sensitive to the different speed requirements of the interconnected applications [12].

Sensing and measurement technologies

These technologies are crucial in order to support faster and more precise reaction and response such as remote monitoring, dynamic pricing and demand-side management.

Sensing and Measurement is an important component of a completely modern smart grid. Such advanced technologies will obtain and convert data into information and boost several characteristics of energy system management. These technologies will estimate equipment strength and the reliability of the grid. They will support regular meter readings, exclude billing valuations, and avoid power theft. In addition they will help release congestion and moderate productions by allowing customer choice and demand response and by associating new management strategies.

Advanced component

Advanced components have an active role in demonstrating the electrical performance of the grid and in spreading over the latest research in superconductivity, storage, materials, chemistry, microelectronics and diagnostics fields. They can be applied in either unconnected applications or standalone or connected together to create composite systems such as micro-grids [13].

Advanced control methods

These technologies are fundamental to monitor indispensable components, enabling quick diagnosis and exact solutions suitable to any event. These devices and algorithms will help investigate, diagnose, and foresee conditions in the smart grid and describe and take appropriate curative activities to except, moderate, and avoid outages and power quality troubles and disturbances. Providing control at the transmission, distribution, and customer levels and will accomplish both real and reactive control across state frontiers.

Improved interfaces and decision support

This technology should enlarge human decision-making, giving grid operators and managers wide vision of their systems applications, real-time view and energy equipment’s.

Enhanced Interfaces and Decision Support are critical technologies that must be applied to help grid operators and managers having tools and training they will need to control a modern grid. Upgraded Interface and Decision Support technologies will convert multifaceted power-system information into data that can be definitely assumed and treated by human operators. Different data display techniques like virtual reality, will prevent data overload and help operators detect, classify, analyze, and perform on evolving problems.

Smart Grid Market Segments and applications

The Smart Grid is composed of three high-level layers: the transmission and distribution layer, the communications and control layer, and the applications and services layer. These layers will be represented in further work.

Each of these high-level layers contains additional sub layers and more detailed market segments. The major Smart Grid market segments and applications consist of:

Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI): The Foundation of the Smart Grid

Advanced Metering Infrastructure is composed of the meter the key component of smart grid implementation, AMI deployment consist of replacing mechanical meters with digital meters that permit for two-way communication.  By providing information as well as energy to the consumer and back to the grid, the consumer is authorized to shift power consumption outlines away from peak-demand times when both prices are high and system reliability and efficiency is to its lowest.  Utilities are also able to collect usage data that can be used to deliver more efficiency and less money and power waste.

Demand Response

Utilities encourage electricity consumers to decrease their consumption at critical, peak demand times. In the future system view, contracts will be made in advance between consumers and services providers, in which they determine precisely both how and when the utility can decrease an end user’s energy charging from and to the grid.

The utility paybacks by not having to recourse to more expensive and less environmentally friendly peaking power plants, and customers advantage is earning income which make demand response a win-win solution.

Smart Grid communication networks develop the way operators reach consumers. Furthermore, domestic users with installed smart meters will progressively have the option to register in DR programs, giving demand response reach to an extensive percentage of the total system.

Grid Optimization: Adding Real Brain to the Present Power Grid

In order to establish digital control of the power distribution network, Grid optimization contains a wide array of potential to give utilities and grid operators this monitoring. The inclusion of sensor technology, communications platform and IT will help enhance the performance of grid in real-time, enhancing reliability, efficiency and safety. Grid operators will gain responsiveness as they have a better visibility of the whole system.

Advanced Metering infrastructure deployments place the basis for utilities to have control of millions of end user appliances, real-time monitoring and control of advanced level grid devices is greater, and grid efficiency is bigger. Upgrading utilities is an ongoing process in North America and Europe, the resulting predictable efficiency gains of grid optimization are not depending upon changing customer behavior.

Whereas variables such as recovery structure and the current state of physical grid assets will affect significantly the concerns and requirements of utilities witch will make constant investment in grid optimization projects very important.

Distributed Generation

Ever more, Smart Grid will be about moving new renewable energy technologies and applications from the land of innovation to the standardization and regularization. All technologies like solar panels and wind turbines are now universal in our day lives and in research, Smart Grid have potentials to make these green technologies global. In fact, many of the solutions that are currently in trend have actually been around for long period now, and Smart Grid should enable and connect in these all flexible renewable generation sources in to a harmonious platform.

While great technological advances have occurred as improved conversion efficiency, scalability, cost reductions and so forth, the issue is no longer whether these technologies are battle ready, but rather do modern societies have the infrastructures in place able to back up the introduction of renewable energy technologies at mass scale. The Smart Grid purposes are to challenge this hard organization problem.

Energy Storage: The Lost Link

The energy storage is a key component of the smart grid future. The primary ideas of how a Smart Grid should function typically focus on decentralized storage choices, rather than bulk storage. While both forms of storage will be utilized on a grid that generally had never a storage policy, dispersed power storage resources – located near the consumption end of the grid – will deliver localized energy where it is most required, reducing the need to construct new power plants and diffusion lines. The most discussed advantage of power storage is that it helps resolve the intermittency problem related to renewable energy, and will help these "green" sources of power scale faster and reach an extensive market infiltration.

Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs): Smart Charging and Vehicle to Grid (V2G)

One of the most important application of the Smart Grid will be the introduction of plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV).With a large size of battery PHEV will be able to store the electricity from different intermittent renewable energy sources and provide electricity back to the grid during periods of electrical pick demand, serving as auxiliary power sources which will increase the robustness of the grid.

The concept is revolutionary for both parties: manufacturers of automobiles and those of energy, however industries experts should develop a strategy to commercialize the PHEV and public services such now are seeking to prepare for what could be a true disruptive technology.

The two principal tasks will be smart charging, and feeding back the grid with electric power or V2G vehicle to grid. The smoothness of the two processes to avoid unplanned peaks and the way you draw electricity from cars batteries without altering the battery life or leaving the vehicles uncharged when they will be used by drivers.

The concept of vehicle to grid (V2G) – drawing electricity from car batteries to feed the smart grid back in peak demand hours will be a revolution in energy storage market, and in this case, new arrangements and analytics will be required to support this research field growing up.

Advanced Utility Controls Systems

The Future of Energy Monitoring and Control An Advanced Utility Controls System refers to the upgrade and continued integration of various mission-critical systems, applications and back-end technology infrastructure necessary to support a utility’s monitoring, control and optimization of the grid. In order to leverage the full potential of AMI deployments (and the end-to-end communication networks now in place), utilities will need to develop enterprise wide systems, capable of sharing data across applications and systems. While historically

Utilities’ systems have been far from integrated, the realization of a Smart Grid will depend on a utility-wide integration of systems (and business processes) which allow for real time visibility and decision support. For example, at the system load level before a utility decides to draw power from distributed storage assets to mitigate peak energy demand, that utility would do well to consider if would makes more financial (and environmental) sense to issue a demand response call instead (or for that matter, weigh the cost/benefits of calling upon any and all grid connected generation sources, for a particular scenario). Other cases will be far more specific. For example, the decision on whether it makes greater sense to charge a family’s electric car with electricity originating from their next door neighbor’s rooftop solar panels (a concept called peer-to-peer) or electricity coming from a centralized power plant. Utilities will increasingly have to face millions upon millions of these types of decisions, and as such advanced utility control systems will be necessary, as the volume and complexity of these types of decisions will surpass the capabilities of human operators, as well as the silo’d utility systems of yesteryear.

Smart Homes and Networks

By adding intelligence and networking capabilities to appliances located inside buildings and residences, both the utility and consumer stand to benefit. Homeowners will be able to monitor their energy consumption and decrease their utility bills with very little determination, as well as economically gain from motivations provided by the utility for energy saving. In the meantime, utilities that now have an allowance of Smart Grid into the house, can better deal with peak demand, elsewhere a simple demand response initiatives. The extension of smart metering intelligence into the home/building itself, connecting the meters to "load centers" is radical progression for the power grid. Although, today some utilities manage peak load demand by right covering these load centers’ usage, a home area network (HAN) and home energy management system would allow the homeowner to indicate a combination of consumption and proficiency across a wide range of devices, changing forever the way the consumer contributes in the energy consumption.

Smart Grid Potential Impacts

A wide area optimized network infrastructure for smart grid systems, combined with the appropriate power sensors in the distribution network, will allow power services to gather and vehicle increased bulks of real-time usage data.

With this visibility, power utilities can more accurately respond to rising or falling consumption. They can also dynamically adjust electricity supply to meet -demand and better predict when and where there could be a weakness or a failure in the grid [9].

In case of an outage, a proper network infrastructure enables smart grid applications to take instant and programmed actions to bind the spread of the outage and to dispatch the right workers with the right tools and the right information to reestablish power as quickly as possible.

Essentially, the Smart Grid will allow utilities to proactively deal with demand, re-direct power around troubles, integrate dispersed renewables and electric transportation and carry on to offer consistent and inexpensive electricity into the predictable future [10].

The Role of Smart Grid Infrastructure in Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions

It is obvious that electricity power plants have negative impact on climate change and on our natural environment. The burning of fossils fuels is associated to the problem of global warming. In fact, electric generation is the major provider of CO2 and greenhouse gases in the world. These anxieties are inspiring the development of whole productions capable of producing energy in cleaner ways.

Electric power causes around 25 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, and utilities are reconsidering what the electricity system of the future should look like. Otherwise, renewable and distributed power generation will play a more important role in decreasing greenhouse gas emissions [15].

Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Reduction

A technology-enabled electric system will be more efficient, empower applications that can decrease greenhouse gas emissions, and increase power consistency and reliability.

Smart Grid technologies and services deployment can have a significant impact on CO2 decrease by logically managing the distribution of power to customers and industries when and where it’s needed:

Decrease peaks in power usage by mechanically turning down selected appliances in homes, factories, and offices.

Decrease waste by providing direct response on energy quantities we are consuming.

Enhance manufacturers to produce smart appliances to decrease energy use.

Sense and avoid power blackouts by isolating disturbances in the grid

Worldwide electric energy consumption is estimated to rise 82 percent by 2030.This claim will primarily be met by constructing many new generation electricity plants using coal and natural gas. In this case, global greenhouse gas emissions are expected to grow reaching 59 percent by 2030 as a result [15]. Building a technology-enabled smart electricity grid can help offset the increase in greenhouse gas emissions by reducing growth in demand for electricity; accelerate adoption of renewable electricity-generation sources, and Delay Construction of New Electricity-generation and Transmission Infrastructure.

perspective and Vision of the future of Smart Grid development

Most of the technologies essential to build a Smart Grid exist today. Forward-looking utility companies are already offering demand-response technologies that, for example, detect the need for load shedding, communicate the demand to participating users, automate load shedding, and verify compliance with demand response programs. Many utility companies are also implementing large numbers of smart electric meters to offer variable pricing to consumers and to reduce manual meter-reading costs.

Several competing communication protocols are still vying to become the standard through which all building devices can intercommunicate. This inability to agree upon a common industry standard has delayed the vision of connecting every electric device and spawned several middleware and gateway companies.

As expected, many white goods manufacturers are making appliances that can connect to a building’s network.

In addition, several public and private organizations have implemented energy consumption dashboards.

So far, however, nobody has been able to define an industry architecture that spans the entire Smart Grid—from high-voltage transformers at the power plant down to the wall sockets in homes and offices. Despite its promise and the availability of most of the core technologies needed to develop the Smart Grid, implementation has been slow. To accelerate development, state, county, and local governments, electric utility companies, public electricity regulators, and IT companies must all come together and work toward a common goal.

Primary Smart Grid Challenges:

Interoperability Standards

The electric grid will be deprived of the real "smartness" it requests without communications and data flow framework for interoperability standards between physical devices.

Until the standards are set, we don’t have a guarantee that the emergent Smart Grid technologies will be "plug and play" and thus deliver flexible solutions from one end of the grid to the other; that utilities and vendors won’t be evolving costly, unsuited systems prone to go out-of-date too early; and that the profitable growth of Smart Grid technologies are being augmented and installed as needed for the benefit of both users and society-at-large.

Common fixed protocols would make it better for all players – from utilities to smart appliance makers to smart meters makers to PHEV makers – to confidently research, develop and deploy technologies, applications and systems.

The value of a true Smart Grid is straightly associated with the technology implementation that empowers a secure, smart and fully connected electric grid. There is wide settlement between utilities that the expansion and implementation of open standards to confirm both interoperability and security are vital for Smart Grid.

Future-Proofing Utility Systems Architecture

In order to support both present and future applications, utilities must appropriately implement the systems architecture and technical requests. The difficulty in this matter is that Smart Grid will be something that you have to deal with every day. The Smart Grid is setting the time for a growing energy delivery and management system that will be frequently upgraded. It is sometimes mentioned to as "a system of systems" and each of these systems will need to interconnect back and forth between each other. Many systems experts have emphasized the perseverance of defining standardized interfaces right from the start, and combining security, data management, network management and other core capabilities into one platform capable to support future applications.

Re-defining Utility Business Models and Incentives

In order to succeed in the energy conservation and operational efficiency of smart grid, utilities need to follow a new regulatory model. Operators are seeking to develop a general strategy to ensure the benefit to consumers as well as for public service utilities. For this purpose it is necessary to encourage consumers to use energy efficiently and with a clear cost recovery, timely earnings and profit for effective public service utilities. Regulatory agencies should establish different pricing schemes and utilities must in their turns introduce new products and services, energy will be converted from a product model to a service model to offer consumers more services classes in order to encourage them to conserve energy and also allow utilities to make respectable earnings and revenue.

The Integration of Large Amounts of Renewable Energy

In reality, there are two separate challenge areas related to moving/distributing renewable energy: transmission and distribution. The most discussed in the media and in Congress during the first quarter of 2009 is at the high-voltage transmission level; the associated challenge is moving electrons over large distances such that the energy from renewable energy hot spots can be put to effective use in heavily populated urban areas.

From a Smart Grid perspective, the challenges are primarily at the distribution level and involve:

Having power flow in two directions on a grid that was only designed to go one-way

Having the necessary intelligence automated into the system to facilitate the management of intermittent sources of energy

While the addition of substantially more renewable energy must be lauded, this is not easily achievable until the grid has been redesigned to facilitate these new loads [15].

Consumer Adoption of Smart Grid Services

The last challenge is the effort of re-defining the user’s relationship with his energy use. Changing user’s consumption habits is a hard assignment. One of the fundamental beliefs of Smart Grid is that by giving the consumer more information they will adjust their energy usage, reacting to real-time signals relaying the price, environmental impacts, and comparative information with the result being a win-win for both the consumer and the utility.

While this interaction with home and building energy management systems – as well increased participation in generating, storing energy and even selling electricity – is the vision of Smart Grid, it remains to be seen how this level of customer interaction will get off the ground. The challenge of how to best educate and entice the public to use Smart Grid technologies and applications remains.

The first wave of major investment in Smart Grid technologies, the deployment of millions of smart meters, has been focused on real-time measurement of the consumer usage data, but data collection alone does nothing to alter consumers’ energy usage. From a technology perspective, the advancement of home energy management systems, home area networks, and new applications (such as electric vehicles, PV and fuel cells) will bring about the deployment of the second wave of components and applications needed for a successful honeymoon and marriage between the utilities and the end-users [15].

Conclusion

The Age of the Smart Grid is upon us.  Huge amounts of capital are being and will be deployed over the next decade and beyond in upgrading the world’s power grid.  Both the political and financial will appears to be behind Smart Grid deployment.  Fortunes will be made in this arena, and our lives will all be changed for the better through the intelligent delivery of more efficient and cleaner energy. Furthermore, smart grid must be supported by a smart and secure communications network, power utilities will have the infrastructure, applications and services required to deliver non-stop, high-quality power safely and efficiently. In our future work we will focus on the communication platform requirements specification of smart grids, and the reference architecture description and criticism.