The Smart Grid is a pretty abstract thing. I thought I would write a few posts explaining some of the ways it plays a critical role in enabling a more efficient, more reliable and more flexible power system.

We Say “Jump!”, they say “How High?”

Today’s power plants generate electricity on demand. But how do they know they need more or less?

Partly, they predict based on weather, time of day, historical data, trends, and knowledge of the states of other power plants. Like a weather forecast, it’s not very accurate, and subject to change. Unlike a weather forecast there can be dramatic, unexpected changes, such as an outage at another plant, or a storm, or steamy weather. In short, prediction is a good guess at best.

But the more specific way a power plant knows it needs to deliver more or less power is by measuring the delivered voltage. The plant produces enough voltage to ensure that all customers get at least 114 Volts. If everyone turns on the lights at the same time, voltage will drop, so they’ll throw on a few shovels of coal and generate more.

This system works almost all of the time. It’s about as smart as a chicken.

Ready For The Unexpected

One of the costs associated with the inability to predict demand accurately is that the utilities always have to be ready to produce more power. Once a plant is up and running, they can juice things up pretty quickly — 5 or 10 minutes can bring on more power, but it’s idling, or “spinning” until then. Consider:

• A power plant that is up and running, but producing nothing, is running at 0% efficiency
• A given plant has an optimal production level; producing more … or less is inefficient
• All plants have a maximum output, at some level of demand, you need another plant to come online
• It takes a long time to “turn on” a plant from being off, so some plants are left to idle, not producing any power, but using fuel
• The most efficient and reliable plants are used first; as demand increases, older, less efficient plants are brought online
• We have relatively little spare capacity since our demand for power has been growing faster than we are building new plants

There’s a lot of inefficiency in this process, of which some is due to our inability to accurately predict or even know actual demand, predict and even communicate failures, and generally know what’s going on. The Smart Grid helps reduce or eliminate many of these inefficiencies.

114 Volts, Plus or Minus

As I noted, the power plant generates enough voltage to ensure that all customers get 114 Volts. They have no way of knowing that customers are actually getting that exact voltage, other than through various models (fancy spreadsheets) based on the various factors they can measure. Their last chance to control overall voltage is at the closest sub-station to the customer. But voltage drops as it travels further. So the customer close to the substation gets more voltage, and the one at the end of the line gets just enough.

The problem is that most appliances are optimized for a certain specific voltage. They’ll work if they get more (which is the usual case), but tend to throw off the excess as heat. You pay for that electricity — it’s just a really lousy way to heat your house (especially if the device you’re running is an air-conditioner).

How The Smart Grid Helps

The Smart Grid helps by changing a one-way communication system into a two-way system. Unlike regular meters, that merely keep track of the amount of electricity used, Smart Meters communicate back. The Smart Grid is able to use this feedback to provide instantaneous information about demand. This information can be used to be smart about how to use the available power — rather than just increasing overall voltage (using more fuel), the Smart Grid lets voltage get routed to exactly where it’s needed when it’s needed. Smart Meters can even play a part in this, actually being mini-sub-stations that route excess voltage down along the line.

So with a huge amount more information, the right amount of power can be generated, then right right voltage can be routed. Fewer plants need to be idling, and more plants can run at closer to their peak efficiency.

These are just a couple of ways that the Smart Grid plays a critical role in our power generation future.

While this first post is my personal introduction as I join the WattzOn blogging team, it is only the first of a string of introductions – the start of a thematic, serial illustration of diverse energy policy questions.

Much about energy policy remains underemphasized because it infrequently grips the imagination – somehow it seems we do not get as attached to energy-efficient appliances as we do to baby pandas and polar bears. I aspire to show that energy efficiency, industry, and technology can indeed provide fertile ground for your interest and curiosity. In the search to find items worthy of your attention, I will remain vigilant for clever, counterintuitive, or just plain unusual developments, reports, and ideas. I do not aim to provide either a news media rehash or personal commentary on current events. Instead, each post will be a small introduction, the equivalent of a short sketch, a paper impression fitted with appropriate outline and detail.

Inevitably, my “life experience” will influence the specific topics – which is another way of confessing that I will discuss some of my daily sights and sounds. However, generally speaking I plan on introducing selected issues and topics in conservation finance, banking and investment, East Asia, and energy policy. For one, I am spending the year in Beijing. I often notice industries here have an interest in reducing energy consumption that is symmetrical to their appetite for cheaper energy; demand receives as much emphasis as supply. In contrast, American public discussion centers on such questions of supply as making energy renewable or emissions-free.  Alternatively, other things just tend to catch the eye. For example, my university’s concierge staff’s living quarters are a series of Hutongs, each one with a small mountain of coal out front for fueling heating or cooking. Overall, I plan for each topic to  relate to more general concerns of energy policy – and topic suggestions are very much welcome.

Any person will tell you that a first impression happens but once. Fortunately, forming an opinion about complex questions surrounding energy is not a series of first impressions, but a prolonged process where information and ideas are assessed against each other. This implies that my posts will provide me with multiple opportunities, both to give you a good impression of current energy policy and to introduce a bit about myself.

Our house has a little ant problem and this year, and we need to do something about it. Sure, I could call the Orkin guy, but I wonder what exactly they would do to make them go away. I have no religious convictions preventing me from killing ants. But I do wonder.

So what does this have to do with energy, you may ask? Well, I am glad you asked. The answer involves sustainability.

If we look at how we use the resources of the earth as people, it becomes pretty obvious that we’re “using up” the earth. This is very evident in cases like fossil fuels, but also other resources like water and arable land. Those who study sustainability find ways to leave our surroundings unspoiled, or even slightly enriched, rather than “using it up”.

For example, sustainable buildings may have grass-covered roofs. These roofs insulate, sequester CO₂, purify and retain rain water so that it doesn’t just wash away the pollutants on the pavement into our larger water supply, reduce the use of resources like the tar or other highly manufactured materials, and the list goes on. Beyond that, grass-covered roofs look nice. They support life, even the lives of ants.

Sustainability considers the full life-cycle of the things we use and how we use them, and is not just about buildings. William McDonough is probably the most well-known sustainability expert and was one of the authors of Cradle to Cradle (a really accessible and delightful book - I recommend you read it). And if you do, read it while in the tub — it’s ok if the pages get wet, as it is printed on a very fine plastic instead of paper, a kind that is completely recyclable (unlike paper, which loses its quality each time it is recycled). But, the book has nothing to do with ants.

So, I started reading about ants. There are tens of thousands of different species. Most are harmless. Most live outside. They get busy in Spring. They have daily patterns. Carpenter ants don’t eat wood. A colony can have from tens of thousands to millions of ants. Ants “herd” other bugs like aphids because they produce a sort of nectar that the ants eat (how cool is that?).

And yes, you can get people to come and charge you and arm and a leg (or perhaps six legs?) to put all sorts of baits, traps, chemicals, and pesticides around your house. Or you can blast a suspected colony with Raid, spreading some more fine petrochemicals in our ground. But neither usually works, especially the latter, which might actually cause the formation of multiple new colonies (as I now know).

One more fact: ants tend to get into your house through cracks and gaps. The best solution, then is to find where they’re getting in and caulk.

Ah, see how it’s all coming together? If ants can get in from outside, so can the cold winter (and hot summer) air. I followed the ants for a few day and figured out how they got in — there were a few rather significant cracks. So, I used the ants to find the leaks I should have caulked last fall.

The ants are still happy and doing their thing … except now, outside. Our house will be warmer next winter and cooler this summer. No trucks loaded with chemicals came by our house. One quarter of a tube of caulk was used. I learned to love the ant.

Thinking about how it all fits together very frequently results in simple, elegant efficiencies. Think.

You may have noticed some of the new features we’ve been secretly adding to WattzOn over the past few weeks.  One of the most exciting is that those of you in the Northeast who use NSTAR and you Californians who use PG&E (with support for more companies to come) now have the ability to link to their online utility bills.

Instead of estimating monthly electricity and heating energy use in your housing profile, all you have to do is fill in your utility login information and all of your data will be automatically uploaded.  WattzOn will grab new bills as they appear, so you don’t have to do anything after you set it up to keep WattzOn up to date with the latest information from your life.  Even if you can’t use the automatic feature, you can easily enter your utility bill data manually.  Just click on the “Have more data? Enter it here” links on your Housing page to get to these advanced tools. From there, you can either go to “Link to your utility provider account” or just start entering the data in the form.

In addition to being a much more accurate accounting of your home power consumption, this new feature also lets you track your energy use (in watts and kg of CO2) over time with a new graphing tool.  Check out the graph of our utility bills here at Synthesis Studios:

I suppose it’s not too surprising that the majority of our energy use is in electricity given that we’re a software company with servers, computers, and miscellaneous gizmos galore.  And, it’s interesting to watch exactly how the summer months use more electricity (for A/C)  and the winter more natural gas (for heat).  But, perhaps most usefully, we can do month-to-month comparisons and see how our energy saving measures are working.  Last March we used 2,033 kWh of electricity and this March we’re down to 1,898 kWh, so we must be doing something right!