Some thoughts on the Electrical Grid

The Electrical Grid, simply referred to as the “grid”, is technology developed over the last 100 years, and has been described by the National Academy of Engineering as the greatest engineering achievement of the 20th century, eclipsing even the Internet.

A comparison with the “other” grid (the Internet) is worth considering. It seems that the current popular focus on a national and perhaps even global level is the Internet. There is tremendous hype about new companies (and applications) such as Facebook, LinkedIn and others. And who is not glued to their email on a daily basis?  In fact, daily commerce has become highly dependent on the use of the Internet. But on a personal level, if Facebook is inaccessible or we can’t read our email for a day or several days, it may be an annoyance, perhaps even a major annoyance, but it is nothing compared to loss of electrical power.

The failure of proper operation of the electrical grid can impact millions of people. One of the best illustrations, but certainly not the only one, is the infamous August 2003 Northeast blackout that impacted eight US states and two Canadian provinces. The number of people who lost power was upwards of 50 million. And the economic cost of this outage numbered in the billions of dollars.

Therefore, correct operation of the grid is important not only on a personal level but also for modern society to function properly. The grid is indispensible for how we work as a society. But currently the grid is facing severe challenges:

• There is continuing need for more electrical power, yet construction of generation resources and transmission lines is constrained by financial limitations and siting concerns.
• Federal and State regulations require utilities to accommodate higher levels of renewable resources. These levels (up to 40%) are higher than today’s grid can manage.
• The US Department of Energy has mandated that utilities improve their equipment and procedures to prevent occurrence of cascading blackouts like the Northeast Blackouts of 1965 and 2003.
• Utilities must conform to urgent requirements to ensure cyber-security under the Federal “Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP)” program.

On top of these severe challenges; the utilities are burdened with an aging infrastructure (both human and mechanical) as well as by needing to conform to increasingly environmental regulations. For example, North American electric systems in some cases are based on 40-year-old technology that is reaching obsolescence and needs to be replaced.

In order to meet the challenges noted above, utilities, must modernize their transmission and distribution systems. It seems that utilities across the globe are implementing initiatives to increase the efficiency, safety, and reliability of the electricity transmission and distribution systems. Of course they are hampered by nature and economic policies. Earthquakes can impact the type of energy source, e.g. nuclear vs solar. Increased supply of carbon-based resources can decrease the amount of renewable resources.

But, hopefully, by transforming the current electric grid into an interactive service network based on advanced communication and control systems, the “Smart Grid", we all can benefit by lower energy prices and more efficient supplies.