A smart grid is an electricity network that uses digital and other advanced technologies to monitor and manage the transport of electricity from all generation sources to meet the varying electricity demands of end-users[1].
The future of energy
‘Energy transition’, ‘electrical grid transformation’, ‘Power Shifts’; what is all that buzz?—confused participant of Power Shifts and really cool person
This vision of the 'energy transition;' is built around the modernisation of the electrical grid, with the gradual development of smart grids, which use information and communication technologies (ICT) to manage electricity more efficiently while adding new nodes to the electrical grid such as Renewable Energy Sources (RES), thus turning households into a consumer-producer-hybrid. The promise of the smart grid is to enable a new paradigm with a reduced energy cost and the environmental benefits of RES[2].
What is the smart grid?
- Intelligent and digitised energy network
- Two-way dialogue: Electricity and Information
- Information + Communication + Power Grid
- Reliable, Secure, Efficient, Modern, Manageable → Full Potential
- The integration of power, communications, and information technologies for an improved electric power infrastructure serving loads while providing for an ongoing evolution of end-use applications. [3]
- A marketing term, rather than a technical definition. For this reason there is no well defined and commonly accepted scope of what "smart" is and what it is not.[4]
What is the traditional grid like?
Traditionally, energy systems from power generation to homes are one-directional and based on more predictable, controllable and centralised power generation, looking something like this:
- ↑ International Energy Agency, Technology Roadmap:Smart Grids
- ↑ See the Category:Technological Dimension
- ↑ http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6018239/
- ↑ http://www.iec.ch/smartgrid/background/explained.htm