In an effort to address the complex issues of climate change, energy independence and sustainable economic growth, global policy makers are requiring utilities to provide more reliable electricity and integrate significant amounts of wind and solar generation; all of which require new power engineering designs and technology. Further compounding the complexity, most G20 economies are powered by electric infrastructure that is 40–50 years old and needs replacing, resulting in massive capital expenditures.

Modern smart grids and major global trends

At the same time, consumers’ use of energy and their expectations of services are evolving with the rapid development of new energy smart electronics, internet applications/services, household appliances and plug-in electric vehicles. Industrial, corporate and government sustainability goals are driving wide adoption of energy and information communication technologies to create energy efficient factories and buildings, produce and store clean energy, and enable carbon neutral operations.

The challenge for utilities and electric service firms now becomes how to invest in both their existing core business as well as in innovation. Leading utilities are developing integrated business strategies, technology architectures and deployment roadmaps to guide these crucial investments. In doing so, it will be critical that they deploy energy and information communication technologies (ICT) allowing them to provide service in a manner consistent with present and future customer needs, while remaining flexible enough to accommodate changes in market structures and highly distributed resources.

Disruptive technologies on the horizon

The leading smart grid designs integrate ET with IT, or energy technology with information technology, to create a smarter, more secure and more robust grid. Key technologies that should be considered in any architecture are:

Distributed generation (DG): Distributed generation is at the inflection point of the adoption curve in the North American market, well past in Europe, and emerging in the Asia Pacific. In Europe, energy from renewable resources in some countries is reaching 50 per cent or more of energy delivered on a given day. The focus on distributed resources to reduce the complexities of building new transmission in several areas around the world means renewable generation on distribution circuits will continue to grow for the foreseeable future.

Sensors: Widespread deployment of sensor technology across the electric grid is occurring in the form of synchrophasors, intelligent electronic devices in substation and distribution equipment and smart meters. In North America, synchrophasor and smart metering deployments have been accelerated by US Smart Grid stimulus funding; in Australia smart grid funding has been awarded that will result in a significant deployment of grid sensing technology.

Energy storage: Energy storage has the potential to enable the electric system to be more reliable and stable, and provide better power quality and customer-side energy management. Climate and energy policies are advocating energy storage as an asset that can be used to mitigate renewable energy intermittency, and storage technologies that can provide adequate dynamic response are becoming commercially viable at grid scale.

Networks: Utilities worldwide are rethinking their telecommunications needs and infrastructure architectures. These architectures are addressing requirements for highly available, low latency wired networks to link substation and control centre operations as well as robust, secure wireless field area networks to support distribution automation, mobile field force automation and smart metering. The electric utility industry is adopting Ethernet/Internet Protocol (IP)-based architectures to address today’s needs and those in the future.

Data analytics: Analytics will leverage data from many sources including smart meters, distribution and substation intelligent energy devices, and phasor measurement unit devices. Advanced analytics will enable smarter, faster decisions by automated utility information systems, utility personnel and customers. The challenge of managing this mountain of data will be managed more effectively through the use of communication network based tools. Advanced data management technology will be used in both utility data centers and cloud services. This scale of data will require effective visualisation and intelligent alarming tools to provide useful and actionable information to system operators.

Short-term technical challenges

Several complex, short-term technical challenges face utilities, electric services firms and technology suppliers in developing a smarter grid; including ultra-large systems architecture, cyber security and distributed intelligence.

Ultra-large system architecture:

The scale and scope of the grid as described above is vastly more complex than the existing electric system, which has been described as the most complex machine on earth. This increased complexity requires new architectural approaches to manage data and controls across tens of millions of end points, federated controls to manage various latency requirements for certain grid operations, and system security, reliability and extensibility. End-to-end network architecture has been developed to support these requirements and is engaging leading research universities such as Carnegie Mellon and California Institute of Technology to further develop ultra large-scale architectures.

Cyber security:

The transformation of traditional energy networks to smart grids requires an intrinsic security strategy to safeguard this critical infrastructure. In the US, concurrent and complementary efforts are underway to address the development and implementation of a lifecycle approach for the electric industry. This and similar efforts underway in Europe and Australia can be leveraged for electric systems worldwide.

Distributed intelligence:

Substantial growth is occurring in the quantity and diversity of distributed systems and devices to be connected and co-ordinated. Distributed intelligence architecture embeds digital processing and software at many locations in and along the power grid infrastructure to implement flexible grid automation. Such systems may be completely distributed, or involve distributed elements with centralised management and co-ordination. The use of distributed intelligence provides opportunities to implement scalable systems to integrate greater amounts of renewable distributed generation, enhance grid efficiency and operations.

Conclusion

The transformation of the electric grid across the globe is being driven by the intersection of energy and climate policy, customer and business value and technological innovation. This journey will likely take 20 years or more, with key policy and technology milestones along the way. Utilities and electric service firms will be challenged to invest in both their existing core business and innovation, and the potential for alignment challenges between policy milestones and the maturity of the ET and IT required to meet them will be significant.

Many key technologies will be vital to the security, scalability, and reliability of the grid, none of which will be built by one company. This transformation and the innovation necessary to support and accelerate it will only take place via collaboration among many partnerships, both public and private.