Change is being forced upon the utilities industry. Business drivers range from stakeholder pressure for greater efficiency to the changing technologies involved in operational energy networks. New technologies such as intelligent networks or smart grids, distribution automation or smart metering are being considered. The communications network is becoming the key enabler for … [Read more...]
Successful Smart Grid Architecture
The smart grid is progressing well on several fronts. Groups such as the Grid Wise Alliance, events such as Grid Week, and national policy citations such as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in the U.S., for example, have all brought more positive attention to this opportunity. The boom in distributed renewable energy and its demands for a bidirectional grid are … [Read more...]
Achieving Decentralized Coordination In the Electric Power Industry
For the past century, the dominant business and regulatory paradigms in the electric power industry have been centralized economic and physical control. The ideas presented here and in my forthcoming book, Deregulation, Innovation, and Market Liberalization: Electricity Restructuring in a Constantly Evolving Environment (Routledge, 2008), comprise a different paradigm - … [Read more...]
How Intelligent Is Your Grid?
Many people in the utility industry see the intelligent grid — an electric transmission and distribution network that uses information technology to predict and adjust to network changes — as a long-term goal that utilities are still far from achieving. Energy Insights research, however, indicates that today's grid is more intelligent than people think. In fact, utilities can … [Read more...]
Software-Based Intelligence: The Missing Link in the SmartGrid Vision
Achieving the SmartGrid vision requires more than advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA), and advanced networking technologies. While these critical technologies provide the main building blocks of the SmartGrid, its fundamental keystone - its missing link - will be embedded software applications located closer to the edge of … [Read more...]