GridSmart grid needed to shift electrical system to alternative energy: Expert
Solar, wind, and other alternative sources are easier on the environment but less predictable than coal, gas, or oil-fired plants, demanding a more sophisticated distribution and delivery system. A more resilient, responsive electrical grid – a smart grid – would adjust electrical loads to energy demands, preventing the shutdowns that leave people without air conditioning just when they need it most. A smart grid is thus a flexible grid – it is an infrastructure which allows shifting load and demand around effectively, ultimately balancing the electrical power and delivery system at lower costs.
Electrical grids are balky beasts, and nobody knows that better than Stanford Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering Ram Rajagopal. He grew up in Brazil, where no one took electricity for granted. Brownouts were an unavoidable — and sweltering — fact of life.
No surprise, then, that Rajagopal’s research is focused on the development of a more resilient, responsive electrical grid, one that can adroitly adjust electrical loads to energy demands, preventing the shutdowns that leave people bereft of air conditioning just when they need it most – a smart grid, in other words.
“A smart grid is a flexible grid,” Rajagopal said. “It’s the infrastructure that allows you to shift load and demand around effectively, ultimately balancing the electrical power and delivery system at lower costs.”
A Stanford University release reports that two developments respectively help and hinder the emergence of smart electrical grids. On the plus side are sophisticated monitoring devices that quickly identify any glitch in transmission systems. These intelligent technologies allow two-way communication between energy consumers and utilities, and scalable storage devices such as batteries and fuel cells.
On the negative side — paradoxically — is renewable energy. Such sources, of course, have much going for them. Hydroelectric turbines, wind turbines and photovoltaic panels produce power from sources that are sustainable and clean. Because they do not emit atmospheric carbon, they are essential in any plan to mitigate global warming.
The problem is that photovoltaic panels and wind turbines only produce power when the sun shines or the wind blows (or, in the case of hydroelectric power, when the reservoirs are full) so production does not necessarily dovetail with demand.
Indeed, Rajagopal said, a massive infusion of sustainable energy into the current U.S. electrical grid could be — well, unsustainable. If we went mostly to renewable sources, we could be bedeviled by brownouts. Utilities would ultimately be forced to build new ecologically unfriendly power plants as a back-up. The grid would be burdened by excess generation capacity that would be needed only rarely, gathering dust and burning dollars the rest of the time.
“It’s a universal problem,” said Rajagopal, an affiliate of Stanford’s Precourt Institute of Energy.
As an example, he cited a study in Brazil that concluded the country faces a 56 percent gap in electricity needed to keep its economy running at peak until 2021.
