Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Smart Grids part 1: The distribution grid

Smart grids are a hot topic in technology, policy, and political circles. Smart grid technology is a rather complicated set of technologies. Smart grids are the general concept of changing the way we treat the distribution of electricity. The electricity provided to your house currently, 60 Hertz Alternating current, will not change with the implementation of smart grids. The key new technologies will give the grid operators a better understanding and control of the electric distribution grid that provide electricity from the power plant to the consumer.
Among the key parts of this new infrastructure is equipment that would measure the strength of transmission lines. If a transmission line shows instability this could be a sign that either their is insufficient supply or that a fault is about to occur. Both of these situations have devastating effects for consumers in the way of brownouts and service interruptions. The idea being proposed is that the electric grid operators could monitor for dangerous situations similar to those that created the Blackout of 2003. This continuous monitoring could allow system operators to allocate resources to avoid brownouts and to protect expensive transmission equipment like transformers and substations.
This system for one thing will allow companies to know information about use of electricity. The next step might be that electric companies would be able to control what appliances are on in households. The other possible impact is what technology will be used to communicate this data to the control centers. There are two possibilities broadband over power line or wireless using 4G or WiMax. Both of these would require some sacrifices by citizens. In one case power lines could cause interference to other wireless systems because they are not shielded. The later solution would require allocating some of the radio spectrum that is highly sought after in general and more importantly by cellphone providers. The biggest risk is hacking by foreign governments or terrorists. All the most recent studies done by the US military have shown that they can hack into electric grid control centers. If we add technology that can allow better management, we should be worried about the possibility of the equipment being hacked and used against us in some way.