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he terms smart grid or super grid has become common enough by 2010. What can smart grids do for civil society and our future? In the context of global scale clean energy systems it means everything. In fact in the face of global population growth, without the development of smart grids we might be hooped.Understanding how technology can transform existing power grids into mega efficient power transmission systems is valuable on many levels. From a social perspective it affords us full consideration of how a global community working together can achieve success in the management of energy resources that foremost considers the health of our shared global environment. It's not a hard sell. We all want to see such a system realized. We want to say we solved this climate crisis by cooperating and using our knowledge wisely. Smart grids promises efficient management of our resources and a far more open system of energy supply management between consumers and suppliers, allowing us to respond to what has become a complex equation of how to meet large scale energy demand and protect the nature world.
Solar electric technologies have the potential for positively transforming community energy systems large or small, and present unquantified potential for growth in market supply, creating jobs while being kind to mother nature. What we are also beginning to see are communities changing how they use energy from within, and what is commonplace today stands to be radically different in 10-20 years. Solar energy is the most reliable, renewable and sustainable energy source we've decided to turn to and offers a foreseeable future.
Solar created electricity and smart grids go hand in hand, similar to how web 2.0 transformed how we use the Internet. Our national power grids warrant a degree of attention equal to if not great than the efforts being made to actually create renewable energy systems like solar parks, wind farms or biomass plants. A tandem effort is required. Smart grids realize the shift in our awareness about what a new energy future implies for our communities and the planet.
Retro-fitting existing grids with smart technology will maximize their ability to manage, transport, store and maintain security of our energy supplies, connecting multiple different parts, often at great distances. Smart grids are the next technological leap, parallel to other rapid evolutions we've made in personal computing, space sciences or bio-medicine. Here are a few examples of what Smart grids will provide:
- End user control of when and how much energy you use, being able to choose and program energy consumption around daily living and budget planning. This means two way intelligence in the grid and smart meters at home.
- Lessening of harmful emissions going into the environment as a direct result of energy management efficiency
- Fuller integration of the Internet, community scale power systems and the larger national grid that provides open opportunities to contribute energy to the grid through solar and wind operations by private operators.
- New abilities to digitally monitor and identify problems in the grid and respond quickly
- Elimination of bottle-necks in the grid that have caused problems with the introduction of more power storage stations throughout grids that serve to more efficiently manage power supply.
- New higher voltage transmission lines can be cost effectively places underground
- Electric transportation can be more fully realized as one of the solutions to mass transit with a smart grid that can expand it's power supply and become adaptive.
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