[In a Nut Shell] Smart Grids
So, before we start talking about what exactly a Smart Grid is all about, answer this question for yourself.
Look around and see how many electric devices you have which are operating right now?
Do a little rewind to your childhood (or early adulthood), and think about how much of these electrical devices did we have, say 10 to 15 years back?
You should’ve got the point by now. The energy requirement that we have today, has increased multi folded. To go by statistics, the electric consumption in the Asian countries has grown up by 76% over a period of 10 years (from 2008 to 2018) while the population has increased only 15% in the span of 13 years (from 2005 to 2019).
This maybe due to multiple reasons. Increasing domestic and industrial needs, introduction of new devices and the economic affordability which increased the electric consumption etc.
But, we can see a clear picture of the future. As the electric consumption is rapidly increasing, we need to generate and transmit more electricity. Now, comes the other point of view. It is difficult to store electricity effectively — it has to be generated whenever there’s a requirement. To generate electricity, we require to burn fossil fuels. There are renewable alternatives but we have to find a way to make them sustainable.
Again going by the statistics, 85% of electricity production depends on coal, natural gas and oil during 2018. The disadvantage of using fossil fuels, is that they emit a lot of greenhouse gases which will eventually affect our atmosphere and results in global warming apart from the fact that they are non-renewable and limited to use.
This helps us in arriving at our point — the electric consumption is rapidly increasing but the requirements have to be sufficed by using alternative renewable resources.
It’s also interesting to note that there are a few peak hours where the consumption of electricity is too high as the majority of the households, industry use them at the same time. As large amounts of energy has to be generated for this short span of time, we have no other way but to use non-renewable fossil fuels, because using the renewable resources is a long term solution.
And also our future electricity bills, will depend on which part of the day we are using the electricity (commonly known as ‘Time of the day tariff’). The Delhi Government has already started introducing this to the consumers with the usage of smart meters (link to the article).
Thus, we require a few smart systems which can help us understand the consumption of electricity from different devices and communicate with the generation and transmission grids so they produce electricity smartly and in renewable ways. That’s when the Smart Grids come into the picture!
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By 2007, the energy departments from the United States of America and the European Union Task Force start to coin this term, ‘Smart Grid’ towards catering to many of the problems in electricity generation, transmission and consumption. Since then, the ‘Smart Grids’ has become a buzzword and the topic of interest especially among the electrical and electronics engineers.
Essentially, electric grid is the network of generating plant, transmission lines, transformers, substations and distribution lines that helps the electricity reach from the generation phase to reach the consumers. To give an example, if there is a break of electric distribution line, the electricity is re-routed through other ways of the grid to reach the consumer, but this is done manually.
The proposed Smart Grids will aim to solve the different problems by identifying the consumption at the consumption level and communicate the same back to the generation phase.
With the smart devices connected through the Internet of Devices (IoT) technology — we can identify the electricity usage of the different devices and automatically run them in non-peak hours to reduce the amount of fossil fuels to be burnt on a certain period.
The idea is also to say, there will be devices at different points of the transmission to observe and see, if there is a breakage the re-routing happens automatically without human efforts.
Let’s consider a simple example, the washing machine and the electric motor that fills the overhead tank in your house — can easily run during the non-peak hours with the help of smart devices, which can reduce the need for electricity, resulting in less usage of fossil fuels and of course also reduce the electricity bill in your house!
What is the future of Smart Grids?
Many of the top companies in power sector are actively working towards creating Smart Grid projects. Most of the countries have realized this need, especially the Energy Department of USA takes a lot of effort towards this. We hope in the near future, smart grids will take over the process of energy generation, transmission and consumption completely and it will certainly be in a massive scale.
If you are a student or a recent graduate professional with a passion towards contributing to the transformation of the electric sector, you can certainly get involved in learning more about this. Interestingly, this field requires experts from multiple domains, ranging from signal processing to computing.
IEEE Smart Grid is an international community of volunteers working on this domain. Any active IEEE student or professional member can get involved with the community at absolutely free of cost.
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About ‘In a nutshell’ series:
‘In a nutshell’ series is an attempt to break the ice between the cutting edge technologies and the aspiring students by explaining with simple terms and also identifying the purpose behind new technologies.
About the author:
Aravindhan Anbazhagan is Computer Science Engineer by graduation currently works as a part of Teach For India Chennai Development team. He is also an active IEEE Young Professionals volunteer involved in 150+ activities in the past 6 years. Being an educator and a technology enthusiast, he enjoys learning more about the new innovations and how they can be used towards solving real-life problems. Know more: www.aravindhan.in
References:
- What is a smart Grid? — US Department of Energy
- The smart grid explained — An Understanding for everyone — EPCenergyeducation
- Smart Grids by country — Wikipedia
- The future of Smart Grid technologies — UC Riverside
- World Energy Consumption — Wikipedia
- Global Energy Statistical Workbook 2019
- World Population Review
- World Energy Consumption
- How could smart grids help us reduce our energy bills?
- IEEE Smart Grids
