Electrifying change (digital power grid)

[jpak]

http://www.energybulletin.net/29104.html

The greatest technological achievement of the last century, according to the National Academy of Engineers, was neither the internet nor the airplane, the artificial heart nor the satellite, the refrigerator nor the assembly line, but that which enabled them all: the electrical grid. There is no small irony in this as contrary to what one may expect, the electrical grid was not meticulously planned and executed but rather cobbled together somewhat haphazardly as utility companies discovered the benefits and efficiencies that could be realized from interconnecting their electrical systems, and over decades it grew into the nationwide network. The electrical grid’s development then was evolutionary, not revolutionary.

Evolution by its very nature is a never-ending series of experiments, some fostering advancement, others impeding it. Interconnection is the prime example of the former while deregulation has proven to be an evolutionary dead end, one consequence of which has been the paradox that the very mechanism that has enabled so much of the technological innovation of the last generation has itself employed so comparatively little of it. Where computers, remote sensors, advanced modeling and myriad electronic devices have transformed every other major industry, the electrical grid effectively remains ‘dumb.’ However, now that the deregulation’s failure has been widely recognized, regulatory uncertainties are being resolved, long-ignored upgrades expedited, and changes that reflect the needs of the marketplace implemented. Combined, the electricity industry is building momentum toward its next evolutionary leap— to an electronically-enabled electric grid delivering digital-quality power.

This shift away from analog mechanical operation will have the most profound effect on the electricity industry in its history. From an investment point of view, the beauty is in the simplicity of the premise. If the US wants to maintain its economic competitiveness as well as its standard of living, both of which are directly correlated to electrical energy consumption, 1 the changes needed to adapt to the demands of the Digital Age must be made. And soon: the US has fallen to seventh place in world rankings of countries positioned to participate in and benefit from information and communication technologies.2

In its most basic form, the transition from analog to digital-quality electricity is a matter of reliability, and realizing the necessary level of service will take a considerable amount of time and involve staggering sums of money, with industry estimates running as high as two trillion dollars over the next two decades.3 To take advantage of the various opportunities associated with the build-out, the Emerging Trends Report (ETR) has put together a broad spectrum ‘best of breed’ approach, which includes various sector-specific benchmarks that must be met in order to remain viable. This is of paramount importance in an industry with more than $800 billion of assets, for the trick to investing in the electrical grid resides in differentiating between the sectors to invest in now, the sectors to monitor for the breakthroughs necessary to make them viable in the years ahead, and the sectors to disregard entirely as pie-in-the-sky hype that will only reward those promoting them.

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[whistle]

1. Would this conversion make the electrical grid vulnerable to E.M.P. weapons attacks?

[hunter]

2. The grid has always been vulnerable to attack.

An EMP weapon would be like using a hand grenade to kill a fly.

A robust "smart" network would allow for all sorts of point failures that the current networks can't deal with, and when it did fail, it would fail gracefully, dropping non-essential services before essential ones.

It would also be more stable when large amounts of intermittent power sources such as wind or solar are utilized.

As it is now a single drunk driver can take out the power grid of a very large region. A trivial operator error could knock out a large fraction of the nation's power grid.