Smart grid: Definition, road map and breadth of this grand challenge

A smarter electric power grid promises greater efficiency, reliability and security leading to greater use of renewable energy sources that positively impact our environment. We can all agree that such attributes, if they can be achieved affordably and sustainably, are worthy of our efforts as a global community. That said, it is instructive to provide a definition for the term “smart grid” to clearly explain why this energy transformation is a grand challenge of our time.

The term “smart grid” refers to hardware and software added to the power system to achieve: a.) a more autonomous responsiveness to events that impact the electrical power grid, and b.) optimal day-to-day operational efficiency of electrical power delivery. Among the events that impact the grid are outages (scheduled and unscheduled), load-balancing and peak-shaving — or sending power back to the grid when demand is high. Smart grid hardware and software encompasses: a.) metering and monitoring of the power system, b.) communicating the conditions of the grid in real time, and c.) controlling the flow of power to maintain reliable service and stable operation. During the development of a smart grid infrastructure, it is reasonable to design the security protocols, renewable-based systems (wind, solar, plug-in hybrid electric vehicle, biomass), time-of-use/demand-driven pricing and other aspects of the electrical power business into this next generation of the grid.

With this definition in mind, the next question that arises is “Where are we in the drive to a smart grid?” For consumers, their ability to manage power usage within their homes and react to pricing that impacts them is a point on the road map that should be realized for many in the next few years. The U.S. federal government stimulated this with over $3 billion that largely went into smart metering deployments. As professionals and policymakers in this field around the world, governments, IEEE, and many other organizations realize that the electrical grid infrastructure needs improvement upstream of the consumer in order to meet that definition of a truly smart grid.

Consider that the road map to a smarter grid has four waypoints. The first is advanced metering and monitoring. The second is a transmission system that can efficiently move power from one location to another. The third is a power grid that incorporates large- and small-scale distributed generation with energy storage that is manageable by power providers. The fourth is the secure and reliable communications infrastructure that operates in tandem with the future electrical power grid.

These waypoints are not laid out in a straight line such that we have to go from one to the other along our path to the smart grid. In fact, different organizations and industries engage to manage the complexity involved in designing this second-generation power grid (Gen2PG). Thus, not every city, town or state will achieve a smart grid at the same time. Rather, the revolutionary result of the smart grid will be achieved through evolutionary means. In order to maintain our standard of living and the quality of service we have come to expect, this architectural change of the power grid must evolve. At the present time, we are approaching the first waypoint above in the next two to three years. Achievement of the full smart grid grand challenge is a decade away, as long as the courses are maintained and funded.

Critical improvements are being made to the grid as it exists now. For example, large power providers have deployed advanced microprocessor-based monitoring on their systems in order to pinpoint service outages. In fact, the Tennessee Valley Authority in the U.S. recently released information about its advanced monitoring capabilities as a model for others to consider. Another example is the automated algorithms used by some utilities for load-shedding when peak demand gets too high.

The smart Gen2PG will also involve advances from engineers (electrical, computer, mechanical, industrial, agricultural, chemical, environmental), biologists, physicists, chemists, economists, policymakers and regulatory bodies. These disciplines have to produce advances in materials, control algorithms, logistics, electronics, electrical switch gear, electrical systems for wind, solar, storage, distributed computing, cyber security, communications, biomass feedstock generation, sustainability assessment and electric vehicles, to name a few. In addition, most of the world has existing electric power grids that have served the global community well thus far. We cannot ignore that this complex machine needs to continue to provide for our needs as we try to change its architecture. From a technology standpoint, this grand challenge is broader and will activate more industries than any challenge facing our generation today.

H. Alan Mantooth is an IEEE Fellow and the Executive Director of the National Science Foundation Center on Grid-connected Advanced Power Electronic Systems (GRAPES).