FERC Report Sees IT Smarts to Link Smart Meters, Smart Grid

Linking the electrical grids with smart electric meters in homes and businesses should create many job opportunities for IT professionals in the coming years.

Two trends in efficient energy management are converging. One involves advanced meters that monitor and manage electric use in homes and businesses. The other is advance response programs utilities offer that manage customer consumption of electricity in response to supply conditions.

According to a just-released report from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, 2008 Assessment of Demand Response and Advanced Metering the ratio of advanced meters to all installed meters has reached 4.7% for the United States, a significant jump from the less than 1% in 2006. On the demand response side, 8% of energy consumers in the U.S. participate in some kind of demand response program and the potential demand response resource contribution from all such U.S. programs is nearly 41,000 megawatts, or 5.8%, of U.S. peak demand, according to the FERC report. This represents an increase of about 3,400 MW from the 2006 estimate.

The report suggests the need for IT know-how to expand smart grid and smart metering use:

One way to mitigate risks in planning AMI (advanced metering infrastructure, the technology for gathering and disseminating information at a utility meter) communications networks is to ensure interoperability. Interoperability allows seamless sharing of data and integration of functionality between digital electronic systems (e.g., computing networks, communications networks, computers, computer programs, advanced metering systems, etc).

The technological means of achieving interoperability is through standards for software, hardware, or firmware. Recognizing a need for standards that would enable interoperability, the U.S. Congress in EISA (Energy Independence and Security Act) 2007 directed the National Institute of Standards and Technology to establish “protocols and model standards for information management to achieve interoperability of smart grid devices and systems.”

In the meantime, many utilities proceeding with AMI plans are doing so cautiously, relying to some extent on open standards to mitigate technological risk exposure or planning and budgeting for periodic technology upgrades to their advanced metering system over the life of their system.

Design of Smart Electrical Grid Should Mirror the Internet

A posting, Smart Grid for a Smart Planet, on smartmeters.com explains why the experts designing the next generation of the electrical grid need IT smarts.

Technological advances of the modern age can take the power grid out of the dark ages and make it smart. Power grids around the world can be monitored and managed in much the same way a computer network is.

Smart meters can be applied to the power grid in a way that every aspect is constantly monitored from the point of generation, through transmission to consumers’ homes and businesses, and as it is consumed. In fact, the smart grid system would look much more like the Internet than it would resemble a conventional power system. A smart grid can handle multitudes of power sources no matter how widely distributed they are – including intermittent, but renewable, power sources such as wind turbines and solar panel arrays.

A piece of advice for IT pros: many information-tech jobs of the future will focus on battling carbon emissions and making energy use more efficient. Successful IT pros combine their IT know-how with industry knowledge, so learn more about the power generation industry and the environmental movement to cut carbon emissions.

Smart Grid Requires Smart Leadership

To create a real smart grid needs more than just smarts; it needs leadership.

In a letter to The Wall Street Journal, Accenture U.K. and Ireland managing director David Thomlinson writes: There is plenty of competition for clean technologies, but no country has yet established a leadership position in the evolution of smart grids.

With smart metering, Thomlinson notes, reducing demand for electricity becomes easier to accomplish.

The demand side has been an unfashionable part of energy policy for 30 years. Now we see smart meters being implemented to help consumers manage their consumption. But it is only through the transformation of our electricity networks into so-called smart grids that we can significantly reduce carbon emissions of buildings and vehicles.

The intelligence behind all of this will come from those with IT skills to create the needed systems and networks. In the U.S., with his energy and environmental nominees, there’s hope that President-elect Obama (above left with environmental advisor Carol Browner) will provide that leadership.

How Fast Can Smart-Grid JobsBe Created Under Obama Plan?

Can the smart grid provide jobs quickly based on existing technology that will be flexible to adapt
to the innovations of tomorrow?

That’s a question raised by Patti Harper-Slaboszewicz, director of advanced metering and meter-data management at energy researcher and consultancy UtiliPoint International, who has analyzed comments made by the top nominees of President-elect Obama’s energy team. In her analysis posted on UtiliPoint’s website. Harper-Slatoszewicz says she’s aware of at least 100 projects far enough along to produce jobs at all levels, entry-level workers to manufacturing to professional. She writes:

Some of these projects may be in limbo waiting for confirmation that the project fits the description of the transformation to green energy and sustainability that the energy team is looking for. Smart metering projects, for example, need meter installers, appointment schedulers, manufacturing, project managers, software, software integrators, customer service training, marketing, network design and installation, computer hardware, uniforms, and more. Projects typically take four to five years to roll out, resulting in positions that would carry employees past the economic recovery period.

Smart meters don’t stand alone, and need an energy Internet with IT smarts to function. As Harper-Slatoszewicz notes:

Smart metering and the associated back office systems and hardware support innovative energy pricing that marry energy efficiency with demand response, allowing customers to reduce peak energy use and conserve energy, resulting in a reduction of green house gases, lower costs, and postponing or avoiding the need to build peaking plants that are only used 100 to 200 hours per year during seasonal demand or during an unexpected outage due to equipment issues.

Year in Ideas: Smart Grid

My favorite issue each year of The New York Times Magazine comes out in mid-December: The Year In Ideas (cover image at left, click on it to enlarge>.

Among the ideas in this eighth annual A to Z listing: the Smart Grid.

Clemson Profs Research Power Distribution Nets

Two Clemson University mathematical scientists are developing mathematical models of complex power-distribution networks to advance the understanding of monitoring in real time the electric grid so utilities can ensure uninterrupted service, improve distribution efficiency, save energy and reduce operating costs.

The challenges of modeling and system identification of the smart grid lies in the fact that the network is vast, complex, time-variant, non-linear and noisy,” “said one of the researchers, Taufiquar Khan (at right), who along with Irina Viktorova received a $285,000 research grant from tech provider Itron. “By noisy,” Khan said, “I mean the millions of light bulbs, computers, televisions, appliances, heaters and electrical motors going on and off contribute to the disorderly pattern of variations of voltage, current and impedance of the AC network. Therefore, we are working on mathematical solutions to optimize metering and communications.”

Also commenting in the Clemson statement is mathematics department chairman Robert Taylor: “The metering and communication data provide excellent opportunities for applied mathematical and statistical modeling and will lead to greater efficiencies in the energy industry.”