Characteristics of smart grids
Characteristic Description
Enables
informed participation by customers
Consumers help balance supply and demand, and ensure
reliability by modifying
the way they use and purchase electricity. These
modifications come as a result of
consumers having choices that motivate different
purchasing patterns and behaviour.
These choices involve new technologies, new
information about their electricity use, and
new forms of electricity pricing and incentives.
Accommodates all generation and storage options
A smart grid accommodates not only large,
centralised power plants, but also the
growing array of customer-sited distributed energy
resources. Integration of these
resources – including renewables, small-scale
combined heat and power, and energy
storage – will increase rapidly all along the value
chain, from suppliers to marketers to
customers.
Enables new products, services and markets
Correctly designed and operated markets efficiently
create an opportunity for
consumers to choose among competing services. Some
of the independent grid
variables that must be explicitly managed are
energy, capacity, location, time, rate of
change and quality. Markets can play a major role in
the management of these variables.
Regulators, owners/operators and consumers need the
flexibility to modify the rules of
business to suit operating and market conditions.
Provides the power quality for the range of needs
Not all commercial enterprises, and certainly not
all residential customers, need the
same quality of power. A smart grid supplies varying
grades (and prices) of power.
The cost of premium power-quality features can be
included in the electrical service
contract. Advanced control methods monitor essential
components, enabling rapid
diagnosis and solutions to events that impact power
quality, such as lightning,
switching surges, line faults and harmonic sources.
Optimises asset utilisation and operating efficiency
A smart grid applies the latest technologies to
optimise the use of its assets. For
example, optimised capacity can be attainable with
dynamic ratings, which allow
assets to be used at greater loads by continuously
sensing and rating their capacities.
Maintenance efficiency can be optimised with
condition-based maintenance, which
signals the need for equipment maintenance at
precisely the right time. System-control
devices can be adjusted to reduce losses and
eliminate congestion. Operating efficiency
increases when selecting the least-cost
energy-delivery system available through these
types of system-control devices.
Provides resiliency to disturbances, attacks and natural disasters
Resiliency refers to the ability of a system to
react to unexpected events by isolating
problematic elements while the rest of the system is
restored to normal operation. These
self-healing actions result in reduced interruption
of service to consumers and help
service providers better manage the delivery
infrastructure.
Source: Adapted from DOE, 2009.
