Smart Grid Is Revolutionizing Energy Generation, Transmission, Distribution, and Consumption
As I’ve written a few times in the recent past, I believe that we have the proverbial cart before the horse when it comes to smart grid. We tend to think of this concept as “futuristic,” like flying cars, when, in fact, it’s what underpins the transition the world is making right now in the direction of energy efficiency, conservation, and renewables.
Here’s Pike Research’s article on virtual power plants, which they define as: “a system that relies upon software systems to remotely and automatically dispatch and optimize generation, demand-side, or storage resources (including plug-in electric vehicles and bi-directional inverters) in a single, secure web-connected system.”
With all the work going into this subject from the world’s most respected IT companies, e.g., Google and Cisco, does it really seem likely that the world of energy generation and distribution will continue to trudge along, essentially unchanged from the days of Edison? Not to me.
The world began to see the value of information a few decades ago. Very quickly, we had an Internet that delivers the information we want, instantaneously, to billions of users with their devices around the globe. Now the world is realizing that the dispatching of energy in real-time is also a big deal. Will the IT world rise to the occasion and make this happen? You can bet the ranch on it.
In the UK you can even get paid for providing virtual power.
Suppose you run a large frozen foods warehouse, you need to keep the facility below a certain temperature to meet required standards, however you will probably run a few degrees cooler than the maximum allowed. These few degrees allow you to temporarily adjust your set temperature from say -22C to -18C in doing so, removing a substantial load from the grid. You can get paid an availability fee to offer this service as well as a kWh fee for not using electricity when the grid operator is desperate to “borrow” electricity for an hour or two.
Other facilities able to earn money in a similar way are facilities producing cryogenic gasses (liquid oxygen, nitrogen, dry ice), large office blocks which can defer use of air conditioning until more power is available on the grid, and certain industrial processes which are not time critical and can therefore be deferred for an hour or two.