The American Smart Grid is a concept which leverages information and communication technology to build a new electric power grid that helps prevent outages and improves energy utilization efficiency, etc. Major information technology (IT) companies in the US such as Google, IBM and Microsoft are rushing to join in.
"From electric vehicles to refrigerators, ten to a hundred times more pieces of equipment could be connected than to today's Internet, creating a network on a scale that has never existed before. The Smart Grid, just in our own field, looks to be a market in the neighborhood of Yen100 billion," says Marie Hattar, vice president, Network Systems and Security Solutions, Cisco Systems, Inc. A source at Google Inc adds: "We should be notifying consumers in realtime of the energy utilization status of their household equipment. In an open, non-monopolistic way, of course. It will create new innovation." And Whirlpool Corp of the US, the largest American manufacturer of white goods, comments: "By 2015, many home electrical appliances will be ready for the Smart Grid."
Major efforts are under way in the US to upgrade the electric power transmission infrastructure, utilizing information and communication technology (ICT) to make it a multi-function network called the "Smart Grid." In addition to American electric power utilities, companies involved in electric power equipment and the like, the initiative is growing rapidly with the addition of ICT manufacturers including IBM Corp, Google, and Cisco Systems, semiconductor manufacturers such as Intel Corp and Texas Instruments Inc (TI), and communications companies like Verizon Wireless.
The Smart Grid will actively leverage information and communication technologies to resolve various problems throughout the entire network, from electricity generating power plants through transmission and power stations to individual demand (companies, factories, homes, etc).
There is an enormous range of applications, including installing sensors throughout the distribution grid to detect outages and make it possible to restore service faster, controlling feeds from renewable energy sources such as solar power generation, upgrading the infrastructure for electric vehicles (EV), plug-in hybrid EVs (PHEV) and the like, implementing demand-side management to control electric power usage by homes, offices and other consumers at times of peak demand, and implementing "Smart Meters" with network control capabilities that will make it all possible. In all of these applications, active utilization of communication is the key.
The Smart Meter, for example, will be a watt-hour meter with a wide-area radio (3rd-generation telecommunications (3G) network, 900MHz waveband multi-hop communication, etc) built in for short-range wireless communication, or an electric power line communication function, enabling remote meter-reading, control of on-site equipment, etc. In California alone, it is expected that tens of millions of existing meters will be replaced with Smart Meters. According to a source at Pacific Gas and Electric Co (PG&E) of the US, the electric utility in California, "We are installing about 6,000 Smart Meters a day, with about 2.3 million already in service. And we can read them all in only three hours and thirty minutes."
There are two main reasons why so many American ICT firms are flocking to the Smart Grid concept (Fig 1), namely: (1) major American electric power utilities are beginning to work on solving distribution grid problems with ICT, and (2) the Obama administration is dishing out a massive Yen1,100 billion fund for the Smart Grid.
Nikkei Electronics Asia magazine is available each month free of charge to engineers, managers and other qualified readers.
Nikkei Electronics |
Nikkei Monozukuri |
Nikkei Automotive Technology |
|---|---|---|
 |
 |
 |
| The magazine for electronics designers and managers. | Design You Won't Regret - How to Reduce the Risk of Accidents | The comprehensive automotive technology magazine. |
Copyright © 1995-2010 Nikkei Business Publications, Inc. All rights reserved.
All editorial content and graphics on this Web site may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the express permission of the copyright owner.
February 2010
January 2010
December 2009