Electricity Grid posts, articles, and infographics

Four Smart Grid Innovations that are Utility Painkillers

February 7, 2012 by Christine Hertzog
with 310 views

The electricity value chain of generation, transmission, distribution and consumption has a number of challenges, or pain points, to overcome to deliver all Smart Grid benefits. Electric utility Smart Grid investment decisions are made on the basis of what reduces or eliminates pain. There is no “one size fits all” answer in... [read more]

Decarbonizing California requires relying more on electricity, once it's low carbon

February 4, 2012 by Karen Street
with 188 views

A 2006 California law, Assembly Bill 32, obligates the state to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 (30% below business as usual), and to 80% below that level by 2050 (90% below business as usual). How is it to done? A team from UC, Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley National Labs, and elsewhere examines this... [read more]

Painkillers – the Real Drivers of Innovation for the Electricity Value Chain

February 2, 2012 by Christine Hertzog
with 188 views

One of the largest US-based industry conferences for electricity, gas, and water utilities just wrapped up in San Antonio, Texas. The entire value chain for electricity was well-represented there – you could find products for generation, transmission, distribution, and consumption of electricity. These products modernize the... [read more]

Black Swan theory and the anti-nuclear sentiment

February 1, 2012 by Barry Brook
with 500 views

Black Swan Theory, as explained by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his 2007/2010 book, The Black Swan, describes an event which is a disproportionally-rare occurrence, is unpredictable, but has a high-impact when it does occur. According to Taleb, Black Swan events include the September 11 attacks, the rise of the Internet, World War I and the... [read more]

The Value of Government Involvement in Standards Development

February 1, 2012 by Dick DeBlasio
with 92 views

Very early on, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) recognized the direct, cause-and-effect linkages among consensus-based standards development, seamless interoperability across the interstate electricity grid and the historic, far-ranging potential benefits of the Smart Grid: By enabling two-way power flow and communications and control... [read more]

ExxonMobil aiming to capture growth in US electricity market

January 24, 2012 by Rod Adams
with 226 views

On January 9, 2012, The Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University held a hydrofracking workshop. The organizers invited a number of speakers from both industry and academia to discuss a contentious, but important energy issue from a variety of perspectives. You can read about the workshop on TheGreenGrok on a post titled... [read more]

How Bainbridge Island Cut Peak Power Consumption

January 23, 2012 by Joseph Romm
with 312 views

The 23,000 citizens of Bainbridge Island in Washington State are showing how a combination of transparent price signals, online social networking and old fashioned community organizing can make a big difference in reducing energy consumption. Located in Puget Sound, Bainbridge Island has been a major energy hog — with residents consuming... [read more]

Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader About Your Electricity Data Privacy?

January 23, 2012 by Christine Hertzog
with 223 views

Saturday, January 28 is International Data Privacy Day. It’s a great opportunity to think about new data created as a result of the modernization of our electrical grid into the Smart Grid, and what this means for our privacy. Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626) is credited with the quote: “Knowledge is power.” Agreed.... [read more]

Allocating the Costs of Distributed Energy Systems

December 26, 2011 by James Greenberger
with 327 views

Both distributed solar energy and distributed energy storage have attributes that make their deployment desirable to society as a whole in addition to the customers who benefit from them most directly. A strong argument can be made, therefore, that in setting things such as “network use charges”, utilities and utility regulators should not impose the full costs of such systems on the customers who benefit from the systems most directly, but should instead be socializing the costs of those systems (or at least a portion of the costs) among all electricity consumers. [read more]

The Smart Grid's Problem May Be Storage's Opportunity

November 28, 2011 by James Greenberger
with 508 views

Energy storage advocates have a different story to tell and by many measures a more compelling one. With energy storage, a utility or electricity service provider manages the challenge (and, yes, the cost) of drawing electricity from the grid in the most efficient way possible. The electricity is then stored locally, by means of a distributed energy storage system, which the consumer draws from when and as the consumer wants. Peak electricity usage on the grid is reduced and greater energy efficiency is achieved through the utility’s management of the storage resource without involving the consumer. [read more]

The Good News Energy Storage Story

November 5, 2011 by James Greenberger
with 1,277 views

This week was a great week for energy storage. Despite the bankruptcy of Beacon Power and the delisting of Ener1, which received inordinate attention from those looking for bad news stories in renewable energy, a game-changing regulatory decision in Washington and a record breaking storm on the East Coast signal a coming of age for energy storage technology. It is important that the energy storage industry tell its good news stories and break the doom-and-gloom Solyndra Syndrome that has come to dominate the media and the political chattering class. [read more]

The China Clock: Designing Urgency into Energy Storage Demonstration Projects

November 2, 2011 by James Greenberger
with 349 views

In short, we need to adopt the China clock. Smaller, more numerous, more diverse and more rapid demonstration projects are the key to developing DES technology and realizing the advantages it holds for the grid. Money for DES demonstration projects is good, and more money is better. But what is really needed is a sense of urgency. Time to completion must become a major focus for government-funded demonstration projects going forward. We must learn to push the time envelope and to push it consistently as a matter of practice, just as they do in China. [read more]

China Thinking Big on Smartgrid, Invested $7 Billion in 2010

November 1, 2011 by Christine Hertzog
with 494 views

China is the most active investor in Smart Grid infrastructure today. According to a 2010 report from Zpryme, the State Grid Corporation - the largest utility in China - was projected to spend $7.3 billion in that year alone on Smart Grid projects. Their focus is on a concept called the Strong Smart Grid. Like other... [read more]

The Canadian Electricity Infrastructure Deficit

October 31, 2011 by Jim Burpee
with 354 views

It’s time for Canadians to focus on the urgency of making multi-billion-dollar investments to upgrade, repair and expand the electricity infrastructure across Canada. Capital investment in electricity infrastructure declined dramatically in the 1990s. After reaching a peak of $15 billion in 1991, investment fell rapidly to just $5.3 billion in 1997 as a result of overcapacity, poor economic conditions and electricity prices that had outpaced inflation as the new facilities built in the prior ten years caused rates to rise. [read more]

Aesthetic Energy- Beautiful Transmission and Glamorous Turbines

October 29, 2011 by Michael Giberson
with 447 views

We talk a bit about the economics of electric power transmission and wind power here, but there is more to understanding the world than economics. Previously we have noted Virginia Postrel writing on the techno-glamour of, among other things, wind turbines. Now we take note of the Pylon Design Competition and its recently announced... [read more]