What is a Smart Grid?

The Smart Grid

Our power grid was created 100 years ago, when the electricity needed was simple. Power generation was located near to the communities. This model was developed to provide electricity for home consumers. It was limited to only one direction, making it difficult to answer before changes due to the man of the twentieth century.

The Smart Grid has introduced two lines of electricity transmission and information that can extend its functions. It had also developed communication at work between computers, between controls and new technologies and tools that working together, make a better, more efficient and safer activity.

The power grid was getting more sophisticated, and the smart grid system, which was introduced into the grid offers greater efficiency and control of the energy flow, providing a varied and comprehensive set of benefits to consumers, utilities and himself electrical system as a whole.

The Smart Home

What is a Smart Home? It is a house that represents the electric efficiency, which the customers are able to manage their electricity usage. The system is set to decrease the electrical demand on the grid at critical times, so it make a schedule to improve the efficiency of the homes and reduce the value of the energy bills. The electric home appliances can be configured to minimize power consumption by performing a communication with the network.

A smart home can have a bidirectional and digital meter, smart grid, because this way, there will be exchange of information between home and the dealership, so it is possible to see how much power is provided by the grid and how much is spent on home.

Renewable Energy

Renewable energies such as solar and wind, are very important to support the distribution of energy. However, the production of energy from renewable sources varies during the day, according to the phenomena of nature, increasing the complexity of the operations and making a greater production far from being feasible. The Smart Grid collects data of photovoltaic systems and wind farms to automate and optimize the use of renewable energy in conjunction with the network.

Consumer Engagement

The Smart Grid offers many opportunities for consumers to save energy and for utilities to operate the grid in a more efficient, effective, and reliable way. But some features enabled by the Smart Grid also involve some sacrifice on the part of consumers, such as holding off on running your dishwasher until later in the evening.

A smart consumer will ask, "What's in it for me?" And the answer is: money. Specifically, participating in these programs will earn consumers extra savings on their energy bills. And for people who generate their own power, it can even result in something you never thought you would see: your utility could mail a check to you.

Many utilities already offer their customers ways to save extra money on their utility bills. For people with central air conditioning systems, for instance, some utilities will place a remote-control switch on the air conditioner to cycle the air conditioner on and off during times of peak power demand. In return, customers receive a credit on their electrical bill.

The Smart Grid will allow programs like these to operate in more sophisticated ways, resulting in greater energy savings with less inconvenience to businesses and homeowners. Some examples include time-of-use pricing, net metering, and compensation programs for plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs).

Operation Centers

The technology of the Smart Grid was created to monitor consumption in real time and show it to the customer and the central supplying, and provide support to the maintenance and to the engineers who can monitor and predict problems with the generated energy.

Equipped with Smart Grid communications technologies, measurements can be taken many times a second, offering dynamic visibility into the power System, making it easier to detect the types of oscillations on the power grid. These technologies will provide rapid information about blackouts and power quality as well as insights into System operations for utilities.

Distribution intelligence

"Distribution intelligence" refers to the part of the Smart Grid that applies to the utility distribution System, that is, the wires, switches, and transformers that connect the utility substation to you, the customers. The power lines that run through people's back yards are one part of the power distribution System. A key component of distribution intelligence is outage detection and response. Today, many utilities rely on customer phone calls to know which areas of their distribution System are being affected by a power outage. Along with smart meters, distribution intelligence will help to quickly pinpoint the source of a power outage so that repair crews can be immediately dispatched to the problem area.

By having sensors that can indicate when parts of the distribution System have lost power, and by combining automated switching with an intelligent System that determines how best to respond to an outage, power can be rerouted to most customers in a matter of seconds, or perhaps even milliseconds

Plug-In Electric Vehicles

The connected electric vehicles (PEVs) allow a reduction in dependence on fossil fuels and greenhouse gas emissions. However, they need to be loaded into a source of energy and the conventional electrical fired plants on fossil fuels pollute.. Thus, smart grids (smart grids) may help PEVs to become "greener" to inform to the users the best moment to carry them (usually during off-peak hours) and still ensure that the vehicle is loaded at the time the user needs. This integration would also allow the ENP inject energy into the network at critical times, avoiding blackouts, or even would supply part of the grid during these events. In this case, it would need financial incentives to develop appropriate batteries, energy and financially. Another concern is the management of loading stations. The smart grids, in that case, would make it possible to identify the connected users and record the amount of electricity used in these stations on their energy bills.

You can read more about Smart Grid and all that we have posted here in this website.

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