Sustaining the natural resources with Smart grid Essay Example for Free

Sustaining the natural resources with Smart grid Essay It is easy to take electricity for granted but modern life would not be possible without it. To keep it going we need more efficient ways to manage electricity. For over a hundred years, coal and other fossil fuels have been used by power plants to produce the electricity we use every day. The grid is a network of power lines and sub stations that carry electricity from power plants to homes and businesses. Today, the grid has problems, it needs updating and is running at capacity. When power lines break or power plants cannot produce enough power, blackouts can occur and that’s a problem that can cause fatalities. Also, today’s grid often relies on a single power plant as its source and does not provide detailed information on usage making electricity difficult to manage. To address these problems in the past, we simply built new power plants but now we can work towards sustainability and reduce our dependence on fossil fuels by using a smarter grid. The question is how and the answer to that question is Smart Grid. The smart grid means adding sensors and software to the existing grid that will give utilities and individual’s new information that will help them understand and react to changes quickly. For example if we consider an accident where a tree falls on a power line and one thousand homes loose power, with the current grid utility officers often physically reroute the power which takes time but with the smart grid sensors and software will detect and immediately route the power around the problem, limiting the issue to fewer homes. The price of electricity changes throughout the day but we cannot really see it with the current meters in our homes, it may be expensive during peak hours and cheap late at night. With the new smart meter at our homes, we could set the dishwasher to run when power is cheap, this provides more control over the energy bill and helps prevent black outs at peak hours. The smart grid also means new ways to use renewable sources of energy. Power generation can now be distributed across multiple sources, so the system is more stable and efficient. Its visibility to communicate and manage electricity is what makes the grid smarter and helps us avoid burning more fossil fuel in the future. The smart grid is still a few years away but soon we will be able to manage our energy bill, healthy environment and healthy economy by making more informed decisions about how we use electricity. There is an estimated thirteen trillion dollars investment required in energy infrastructure over the next twenty years. This poses a need and an opportunity to shift towards a low carbon, efficient and clean energy system, and Smart grid will be a key enabler of this transition. The three major factors which have enabled a smart grid are Information, telecommunication and power technologies; integrating these three together have made a smart grid possible. Market analysis Electricity consumption is expected to increase continuously in the worldwide as in Figure 1, as the same The U. S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) is expecting total demand for electricity in commercial to grow 42 percent by 2035. Many countries developed new technology and try to use other energy instead electricity in order to save energy and reduce cost. Smart grid is an innovative technology to control and deliver electricity to customer by using digital technology that it can reduce cost electric distribution and transmission. As the end of March 2012, U. S. Department of energy has provided the smart metering close to 3 billon dollar, 1 billion dollar for electricity system, and around 0. 5 million dollar each for customer system and electric transmission. Moreover, program had been installed more than 8 percent of all electricity meter and 10. 8 million for smart meter in the United State. For example, Florida save more than 500,000 dollar annually because they enable advance metering (AMI) which make the efficient repair, servicing and billing in the Florida. Figure 1: Residential Sector Electricity Consumption per capita by country group 2002 and 2025. (Taken from Arno, A. (n. d). Residential Sector Electricity Consumption per Capita by Country Group) By end of this decade, a British consultancy also predicts that in European Union countries will be installed smart meter between 133 and 145 million of smart meter, the market will be the biggest in countries. In additions, many inventive companies are interesting to create and produce various applications that can be use on the smart grid which affects trend market. With the reduction in distribution and transmission loss benefits from smart grid, the both benefits improved in energy efficiency that is the major to drive of this market and attracts the governments of many countries define important roles into it and pass on mandates and regulation for the same. Unfortunately, the price of smart grid network is quite high that it is an obstacle in the smart grid market. Lack of interoperability of standards is huge amounts of investment happening in this market, and vast service providers who provide the service across the globe in different standards has affected the growth of any industry. Figure: 2 Smart grid technology markets in 2011-2016 (Taken from Marketandmarket. (2012). Smart Grid Technology Market Analysis Global Forecast By Hardware, Software Communication Network Technologies (2011 – 2016). As in Figure2, the global smart grid market is expected to gain until 80. 6 billion dollar in 2016 compare in 2011 which was 22. billion dollar at a CAGR of 28. 7% from 2011 to 2016. The Future trend on smart grid technology is to improve technology base on the existing technology to be more efficient of electricity and to increase the investment of governments as well as utilities. For the long run the smart grid should develop much more than Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) and Phaser Measurement Units (PMU) which combine to Smart Grid, Integration of power system to make more efficient, more renewable friendly-grid, and so on, the smart grid may be long run in the market. Staffing Profile Everybody in organization who involve with power system for example engineers, project engineers, consultants and managers have to understand smart grid and they have to train by smart grid training. The major target of training program is can make staff deal with the unexpected situation such as power failures and reduce the bad impact that might be happened in process. In course training they provide foundation of mathematic and simulations. Government in U. S. pays attention to smart grid. Recently, country around the world for example US, China, India, the United Kingdom and the European Union have introduced policies of smart grid in their country. They hope that it helps to increase level of interest smart grid and in the future, smart grid will pay an important role in the world more than today. Nowadays, the U. S. has invested in smart grid technology $7. 8 billion, China $7. 3 billion and predict in the future will spend $96 billion by 2020 because energy was expected to increase in the future. A smart grid including with a variety of control features, automations, communications and sensors. The staff have to understand the process of smart grid for protect the problem that can happened while work. Staffing profile is important for staffs who work in smart grid process. From the statistic, the business losses in the U. S. $100 billion are from electrical failures because short power disrupt. To understand the self healing grid can help to reduce the problem from blackout and sustain services and improve quality for customers. The evolutions of smart grid will gradual increase. The smart grid was initiative by use $74 million and $37 million from U. S. Department of Energy support. In the Rensselaer, N. Y. project they use $35. 5 million for initial smart grid NYIO’s new central control. Installation of capacitor thought N. Y. has involved in the project. NYISO expects that it can help to reduce power loss and save the state $9 million a year. In the project NYISO’s will connect with other network in other country like New England, the mid-Atlantic, the Midwest, and Ontario, Canada to produce broader circumstances attentiveness. From this project they expect that it will reduce electricity bills of customer to $2. 8 billion in next 20 years. The course of smart grid system technology is involved with the knowledge of smart grid. The staff has to take course and they can receive smart grid certification. In the course provides the knowledge that has an advantage to staff like introduction of smart grid in to advance knowledge for help staff can deal with the unforeseen problem. Staff will know an advantage of employ a smart grid, every element of a smart grid and the future. The course also provides staffs to know the current boundaries and restraints of power grid. In the advance course training of smart grid, staff can success of smart grid operation and infrastructure be hide the smart grid and know the systems. There will be center on information technology, hardware and software tool. Staff can understand and can improve the efficiency of the smart grid for their organization. In this course of the training is $1,595 per course which is 4 days.