The Grid Needs Help—Cartoon

From the Center for American Progress comes this cartoon (hat tips: Jan Davis, jtresearch.com)

The Grid Needs Help.

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12 Great PDFs about Smart Grids

After Five Great Podcast episodes about smart grids, here are 12 Great PDFs about Smart Grids, on my Scribd page.

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Five Great Podcast episodes about smart grids

1. David Biello 60-Second Earth podcast. The smart grid in 60 seconds!
2. Nightly Business Report (starting half-way), Jan. 26 episode. The stimulus package and smart grids.
3. IBM and the future of Energy. IBM take on the smart grid and the “Intelligent Utility”
4. Building tomorrow’s smart grid today. An episode of Currents:The Energy News Podcast
5. From ESRI, a podcast on Smart grid and how enterprise GIS technology can help to manage these systems.

Enjoy !

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The Cost of an Unreliable Power System

The real payoff of a Smart Grid lies in its ability to avoid power interruption. See how it costs:

Industry                                        Average Cost
of 1-Hour Interruption

Cellular communications             $41,000
Telephone ticket sales                  $72,000
Airline reservation system            $90,000
Semiconductor manufacturer      $2,000,000
Credit card operation                     $2,580,000
Brokerage operation                      $6,480,000

According to Galvinpower.org

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Sustainable Electricity - A new CEA Program

The  Canadian Electricity Association (the association of all Canadian electric utilities) recently launched a new program, Sustainable Electricity .

Sustainable Electricity comprises the following four elements:

1. A Policy for Sustainable Development – Corporate Responsibility – CEA member utilities have committed to implementing the program’s policy, operationalized by key guiding principles which form the basis of the program.
2. Performance Indicators and Reporting – Each of the guiding principles is supported by specific indicators and metrics that will be used track overall industry sustainable development performance. Utilities will report on the performance of these key indicators, and overall industry results on sustainable development will be published in an annual report to stakeholders.
3. Public Advisory Panel – A Public Advisory Panel, made up of distinguished and qualified Canadians, will provide independent opinion and advice to the CEA Board of Directors on the implementation of, and improvements to, Sustainable Electricity.
4. External Verification – The implementation of Sustainable Electricity will be verified by an independent external verifier.

I think this is a serious intent (with performance measurement and accountability) to increase the triple bottom-line. It’s also coherent with  smart grid initiatives.

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The Next Phase for the IT Industry

For the first 60 years of the computer revolution, much of the attention of scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs has been on helping to make PEOPLE more productive. In the next phase, one of the important roles of IT will be to make RESOURCES more productive
(source: BusinessWeek)

Hence the Smart Grid will be a subset of Smart Technology.

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2009: The Year of the Smart Grid

“The smart-grid vision is nice; we all have our color PowerPoint slides, I think people kind of get the vision by now. Now it’s time to get stuff done.”

- Don Von Dollen, manager of intelligent-­grid research at EPRI.

2009 will be the year of the Smart Grid . Recent activities suggest that we have reached the tipping point:

• Venture Capital Investment in Greentech and Renewable Energy exceeds $2.5B in Q4 2008 and Reaches $7.7B for the Year
• Xcel Energy made Boulder, CO, the first Smart Grid City .
• Google launches Google PowerMeters , an application to track your own electricity consumption.
• General Electric implement a smart grid in Maui .
• IBM implements one in Malta
• Cisco is also interested in the Smart Grid business .
• Research suggest is could be $65 billion market opportunity in 2013 .
• A report shows Smart Grid investment could create 280,000 jobs .
• The US government will invest $11 billion toward smart-grid technologies to run the power grid more efficiently .
• General Electric and Google teamed- up joined to push for better federal and state policy to enable the grid and organized a public event,  “Plug In to the Smart Grid “.
• An article in the Technology Review shows how smart-grid technology is a necessary condition for green tech and renewable energies.
• The Ontario Smart Grid Forum argues in a new report for a $1.6B investment over five years on smart grid technologies.
• The Ontario Centre for Environmental Technology Advancement also highlights the necessity and benefits of Smart Grid technologies in a new report.

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The Ontario Smart Grid Forum released yesterday on the economics of Smart Grid in Ontario Enabling Tomorrow’s Electricity System a report and call to action for a “co-ordinated effort to increase reliability, develop economic opportunities and promote environmental sustainability through smart grid technologies.” The forum concluded that, although Ontario is going in the good directions, it’s not going fast enough. The powers that be are invited to:

– develop requirements for and propose sufficient monitoring of distribution connected generation,energy storage, and responsive load;
– determine the authority necessary to direct the operation of these facilities, the conditions under which their operation could be directed and any compensation that would be provided to the facility;
– propose contractual and pricing arrangements with distribution connected generation, energy storage, and responsive load that support efficient grid operations and are consistent with the operation of the wholesale electricity market;
– coordinate the development and implementation of grid control and information systems to facilitate the actions listed above.

Read the report here:
Smart Grid Report

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Smart Grid: The Video

An excellent presentation of the Smart Grid, the future of electricity distribution.

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