Moving beyond a one-way energy-distribution system that has remained unchanged since the industry’s inception and into a method where energy distribution is networked similar to the internet was discussed last Wednesday at the Austin Clean Energy Forum.
Roger Duncan, Austin Energy general manager, said this new “smart grid” is named the Pecan Street Project and will lead to greater energy conservation.
“This is an exciting project that underscores the vision set forth by Mayor Wynn and the Austin City Council of exceptional community-wide efficiency in energy use combined with clean, sustainable generation that takes advantage of advancements in distributed energy,” Duncan said.
Michael Webber, UT’s Clean Energy Incubator co-director, said today’s power grid sends power from traditional energy producers, such as coal-burning plants and natural gas plants, to homes and commercial projects in a one-way manner. He said the future grid will have more capability and will allow for energy to flow in two directions.
Webber, who is also an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at UT, said the smart grid will incorporate digital information technology and clean energy sources so that every home is a potential power plant, particularly with the advent of solar panel cells that can line rooftops. By using solar cells, homes can actually earn credit on electric bills if they put enough energy back into the grid.
“In the future, your home might be not only a source of power, but on some days — on peak afternoons, it will send excess power to the grid and the smart power grid will be able to better handle those kinds of flows,” Webber said.
He said the smart grid, in combination with smart meters and appliances, will allow for people to understand their energy consumption via a Web interface.
“When you have a smart grid, you will be able to open an app on your iPhone and turn down your thermostat or run your dishwasher,” said Colin Rowan, Environmental Defense Fund spokesman. “It’s about smartening up the system enough so that it can be controlled not just within the house, but by the user outside the house.”
The smart grid is being developed in partnership with Dell, General Electric Energy, IBM, Intel, Oracle, Cisco Systems, Microsoft, Freescale Semiconductor and GridPoint. It will require new technology and methods not only with hardware, but with software as well.
Included in the project will be a new intelligent switch developed by Siemens Energy that will enable automated energy load shifting and which will manage power outages.
According to Siemens, Austin Energy is the nation’s ninth-largest community-owned electric utility, serving 388,000 customers and a population of more than 900,000. Austin Energy generates over 2,600 megawatts at any given time from a mix of nuclear, coal, natural gas and renewable energy sources.
“Siemens understands that a smart grid is more than smart meters — it includes integration of renewables, making the transmission network more intelligent as well as automating the distribution network,” said Muhammad Sohail, Siemens Energy vice president of the High Voltage Products business unit.
Rowan said the Pecan Street Project is on step five of a 50-step process and that they are by no means done. A Phase 1 findings and recommendations report will be released in the fall.
He said the only difficulty with the smart grid is finding a financial model that will keep utility businesses alive while people are conserving energy.
“If a utility succeeds in getting you to spend half as much in your energy, they make half as much money,” Rowan said. “The first utility that figures out how to create a sustainable profitable business model based on the idea people don’t have to spend and burn more energy for [the utilities] to make a fair and reasonable profit — that is going to be the utility that truly reinvents the energy delivery system.”
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