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What are Utilities Looking for from their Digital Grid Solution?

posted Nov 11, 2009 7:23 AM by Subodh Nayar   [ updated Nov 11, 2009 7:31 AM ]
  1. For most utilities the a smart grid investment will:
    1. Improve resilience to attacks, natural disasters and operator errors which in turn will result in near-zero wide-area blackouts and greatly reduced local interruptions.
    2. Deliver High-quality power for sensitive electronics and complex computer applications and the means to differentiate the power and therefore bill appropriately.
    3. Give easy options for consumers to manage their electricity use and costs.
    4. Enable the plug-and-play integration of renewables, distributed resources and control systems.
  2. The implication is annual savings of tens of billions of dollars from reduced interruptions, reduced congestion and reduced need to build expensive plants and lines.
    1. Thus the distribution grid plays critical role in the pooling of power sources broadened and degree to which existing dominant sources of power can be made to reduce their carbon emissions.
    2. Success relies in large part on extending the microgrid to serve the median meter - a residential consumer whose peak load is 12kWh that will require an inexpensive microgrid that is integrated with the utility’s communications infrastructure for monitoring and control.
  3. Rural utilities recognize that they must embrace a comprehensive integrate approach to CO2 and other harmful emissions.
    1. Capped ability to add coal fired generation
    2. Existing RPS incentives tailored to IOUs
    3. Existing DG, Price led DR focused on the largest consumers of electricity which yields the best return on the considerable investment required to make the heavy user (300MWe) independent of the grid.
    4. Predominance of residential load with attendant dramatic changes between base and peak load.
    5. High penetration of AMR. Leading to a desire to avoid any solution that would result in investment being reclassified as a stranded assets
  4. To be successful, electric utilities need:
    1. Broad range of cost effective generation
    2. Make changes in generation, transmission to make more efficient use of the power supplies
    3. Enhance the role of communications to connect the data and decisions at each stage of the transaction that begins with consumption of electricity and ends with its generation.
  5. Broadly deployed microgrids will mean a proliferation of inverter-based generation within the distribution grid the need increases for auto-synchronization with the grid; this is the most complex problem for microgrids that contain numerous generators that all must be in phase for successful synchronization. Microgrids are likely to need three levels of control-internal, external and asset:
  6. If the microgrid is controlled via a central controller (as opposed to relying on local generation control) sophisticated algorithms would need to be developed to accommodate a wide range of load and generation output scenarios and power flow constraints created by line constraints and generation availability.
    1. For its external control system, generators in the microgrid must also be able to rapidly respond to changes in load to maintain voltage and frequency.
    2. Microgrid fault current interruption is particularly challenging as microgrids require an ability to provide coordination of protection devices in both standalone and grid parallel modes.