Distributed generation resources - like these solar panels being installed on a rooftop In California-help define the smart grid paradigm. Photo courtesy Southern California Edison. Anew generation of resources, technologies and devices are being deployed to build what's called the smart grid. More than just a new super transmission system, the smart grid will transform how electricity providers operate their systems.

"We're at a point where there are advanced technologies that are becoming more cost-effective," said Wade Malcolm, smart grid leads, Accenture. "Utilities have been evaluating how they can use these technologies instead of conventional mechanical technologies."

The smart grid emphasizes interoperability, renewable generation, distributed generation and storage options, including dispersed energy storage with electric vehicles. It's envisioned as a nationwide network that uses information technology to deliver electricity efficiently, reliably and securely. The fines between generation, transmission, distribution and the consumer will blur.

Sounds like a good thing, but what is it and how will it change the way power is generated and delivered?

What is the Smart Grid?

"Smart grid is a marketing term that is devoid of technical definition," said Brian Seal, senior project manager, power delivery and utilization, Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI).

For clarity, Seal's preference would be to use a collection of separate terms to define the four areas he said are discussed most often in relation to the smart grid: the transmission grid, advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), distributed generation and customer engagement.

Common smart grid themes are improved efficiency, improved reliability and engagement of the customer "and just about everyone would say that a smart grid will accommodate the integration of widespread renewables or widespread distributed energy sources," said Seal.

The smart grid is a modernized, self-monitoring system, based on industry-wide standards, crossing international borders and participating in wholesale energy trading, providing a stable, secure, efficient and environmentally sustainable network that's ABB's vision, said Gary Rackliffe, vice president, smart grids.

"The characteristics of the smart grid are interconnection of renewables, automation, customer participation, self-healing and monitoring, system efficiency and reliability," said Rackliffe. "The implementation of controllable devices, that's the smart grid."

For power generators, the smart grid means managing distributed resources, absorbing energy storage and renewables and getting ready for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles.

Managing Distributed Resources

Distributed generation (DG) is in the forefront of a lot of thought, said Seal. If DG - which includes energy storage, microturbines, fuel cells, electric vehicles, solar energy and to a lesser extent microwind - emerges significantly, it will present a major challenge for the traditional sources of generation.

Beacon Power is developing a 20 MW flywheel-based energy storage plant in New York. Illustration courtesy Beacon Power.

EPRI will be involved for the next five years in smart grid demonstrations that focus on the integration of distributed resources by enabling communications that make them controllable and dispatchable.

Who has the best skill set for managing this kind of network?

"When we take generation out of the central hub and spread it out over the countryside, ultimately those resources are best managed with the same type of knowledge and information that people had in the centralized location when they were managing the larger resources," said Seal.

Second to DG in its impact on the generator would be demand response or load management. ABB's Rackliffe said demand response has the potential to change load profile and decrease the need for peaking power, which could shift the energy markets.

Generators could soon be managing DG and demand-side resources (loads) in addition to traditional power sources. Smart grid technologies are automated and enable two-way communications, giving power generators the ability to monitor a number of plants and implement control strategies in a fraction of a second. A utility could have much more precise control over its grid, which is what is needed to accommodate some of these new sources of power generation.

"It looks like you're adding hundreds or thousands of little generators all across the grid and that requires a much different control strategy," said Accenture's Malcolm.