Smart Grid
Nations across the world are facing the challenge of increasing power production while reducing the carbon footprints. For minimizing power loss we can use smart grids. One day smart grid will pervade the whole world. With the application of smart grid; every significant energy consuming device will have an IP address. With various point of power generation, the utilities and the consumers will all be connected by a network & will be able to communicate with each other over the network, the shared information to make intelligent decisions and even use the network to control how each and other work, it necessary.
A smart grid would deliver electricity from suppliers to consumers using digital technology with a two communication process to control appliances at consumers home to save energy, reduce cost and increase reliability and transparency. It would mean an electricity distribution grid with an information and net metering system. A smart grid includes an intelligent monitoring system that keeps track of power consumed by a system. It also incorporates the use of superconductive transmission lines to minimize transmission losses as well as the capability of integrating renewable electricity such that from solar and wind energy. When power is least expensive, the user can allow the smart grid to turn on selected home appliances such as washing machine or factory processes that can run for arbitrary hours. At peak times it would be turn off those appliances to reduce demand.
A smart grid is an umbrella term that covers modernization of both transmission and distribution grids. This modernization is directed at a disparate set of goals including facilitating greater completion between providers, enabling greater use of varied energy sources, establishing the automation and monitoring capabilities needed for bulk transmission at cross continent distances nd enabling the use of market forces to drive energy conservation.
A United States Department of Energy (US D E) study calculated that internal modernization of US grids with smart grids capabilities would save between 46 and 117 billion dollars over the next 20 years. As well as, with these industrial modernization benefits, smart grids would expand energy efficiency; from the grid to the home by coordinating low priority home devices such as water heaters, so that their use of power tasks advantage of the most desirable energy sources. Smart grids can also coordinate the production of power from large numbers of small power producers such as owners of rooftop solar panels an arrangement that would otherwise prove problematic for power systems operator at local level.